Then: Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?
Now: Will you still Rollerblade with me when I'm 64?
Just a generation ago, turning 40 meant middle age, a farewell to youth. By 64, you were a bona fide geriatric.
Today, the first wave of baby boomers - those born in 1946 - begins turning 50. In the next 18 years, 76 million boomers will hit the big Five-Oh.
Do the folks see themselves as middle-aged?
Not a chance.
``The concept of middle age is like the horizon - it's always moving away,'' said Jon C. Baggs, 45, a Haddonfield chiropractor.
Like many boomers, his life stages have not been predictable. He has remarried, has two high schoolers and a baby on the way, and spends summer Saturdays in Ocean City on his surfboard.
``In my mind, I'm not there yet,'' he says.
Because people are living so much longer, and because the baby boom is aging, the common definitions of young, old and middle age don't apply anymore.
For the last six years, a dozen scientists and academics - funded by the MacArthur Foundation - have been examining midlife. They have interviewed 7,000 people. Their results will be made public next fall, but they already have concluded some amazing things.
As director Gilbert Brim explained:
* ``There is no such thing as a midlife crisis.''
* ``There is no shared definition of middle age.'' (It is easier to say what middle age is not: 25 is too young, 75 too old.)
* ``Though most of us will share the events of midlife, there is no single path that we all take.''
The chronological pattern of life - other than that we move from birth to death - is over. A straight linear concept - school, marriage, children, career, retirement - is as ancient as Ozzie and Harriet.
Life today is a series of cycles - marriage, divorce, remarriage; kids growing up, kids moving out, kids moving in; parents growing old, growing ill, dying; corporate squeezing, early retirement, starting a new career. These cycles can begin and end almost anywhere on the timeline, at 30, at 50, at 70.
``There is a revolution in the life cycle,'' writes Gail Sheehy, chronicler of life's stages, in her new book, New Passages. ``In the space of one short generation the whole shape of the life cycle has been fundamentally altered. People today are leaving childhood sooner, but they are taking longer to grow up and much longer to die. . . . True adulthood doesn't begin until 30. Most Baby Boomers don't feel fully grown up until they are into their 40s, and even then they resist.''
