BABY BOOMER WOMEN DO NOT BELIEVE THEY ARE OLD. HERE'S THEIR CHANCE TO LAUGH THEIR WAY TO REALITY

Baby Boomers are famous for denying they are old. "I don't look at all like my mother did when she was my age," they boast on their way for a six-hour hike. "My children have no idea how cool I am," they pronounce. "Seventy is the new thirty-five," they chant.

Baby Boomer women have a particular challenge in accepting the fact that they are not twenty - or at least forty-five. They burned their bras fifty years ago and some are enjoying their second wave of marijuana use. They're also grandmothers - but the 'cool' version. Therefore they can't believe they've become invisible to the rest of society or that they will, at some point, will stop ruling the world. (They don't know they're not ruling it now.)

HOW I LEARNED I'M OLD gives those women an opportunity to accept their plight, laugh about their denial and be reminded of the serious benefits of aging.

HOW I LEARNED I'M OLD is a collection of humorous essays embedded with a smattering of serious insights. Together, they tell the tale of what happens when middle age mysteriously departs and old age claims its territory.

For this country's 38 million BABY BOOMERS, topics like 'The New Party Game' (counting wrinkles on other women's faces), the insulting arrival of chin hairs and the sudden inability to monitor personal opinions in the presence of strangers have universal appeal. So do chapters about 'Mean Girls' in their seventies and the emotional legacy of mothers.

The book is divided into sections; "Mind" "Body" and "Spirit". Always with a comical overtone, it also delves into the more important benefits and realizations of the aging process; what friends teach us by example, who we miss most when they're gone and which values really matter.

A former regional media writer/producer and published poet, Romney Humphrey is a produced playwright Off-Off-Broadway, in California and the Northwest. She has won national awards for her media writing and producing. She, according to evidence in the book, is now old.