You get happier as you get older, according to a U. Mich. study.

This is absolutely right. At 61 (same age as Pete “hope I die before I’m old” Townsend), I am happier than ever, WAY happier than I was at 41 or (aaaarrrrgghh!) 21. I used to fret for WEEKS over quite inconsequential things. Now I don’t give a flying falafel about anything outside the welfare of my wife & kids.

On the other hand, it is true–who doesn’t know it?–that you are more peevish, more easily IRRITATED, when you’re older. I don’t think irritation is a form of unhappiness–or if it is, it is surely a very minor one–but not being able to remember where I left something, or repetitive junk phone calls, or incompetent salespersons or bureaucrats, can lay waste whole ten minute stretches of my day. Nothing any longer wipes out a whole day, though, much less a week.

Nor have I yet come up against Dr. Johnson’s apothegm that “Suspicion is the vice of old age.” I am as sweetly trusting as ever.