Mentorship: the not-so-pretty and the beautiful

From My Corner of the World

When all my parents' friends started turning 40, we accumulated over-the-hill geriatric party paraphernalia. We laughed with our parents at old-age jokes that felt exceedingly appropriate to my little-girl eyes.

About a year before *we* turned forty, I accidentally referred to someone as "acting like a forty-year-old man" — a phrase I'd habituated for ne…