Old ladies who didn’t love me

“Isn’t it soon for me to be getting arthritis?” I asked my orthopedist. I assumed I had a young person’s pain: an injury, or maybe a cyst. “No,” he said, then checked my chart again for my age. “No, not at all.” At 36, I had been preoccupied by my age, and this didn’t help. I’d been looking at every woman’s neck to see when the accordion stretch of the chin would kick in. Could I stave it off a ...