… from the symptoms of PAA?
This disease is frequently undiagnosed but it can cause great harm to career, social life, and the shine on shoe toe caps.
PAA afflicts one out of every seven people. It’s been compared to chicken pox — wildly contagious and very annoying (to others).
The following symptoms may indicate PAA (a k a Premature Attitude Aging):
1. Do they lie and tell people they don’t watch television even though you know they are addicted to “Green Acres” reruns?
2. Do they brag about cutting their own hair because why bother if they might be bedridden with gout?
3. Do they eat grapefruit and boiled chicken for dinner (blecch) because they want to be thin? (Hat tip: Thelma M.)
4. Do they wear black when it rains?
5. Do they tsk tsk when they see someone carrying groceries in a plastic bag?
6. Do they look for the name of someone they know on the obituary page?
7. Have they purchased a cemetery plot?
8. Do they feel it is imperative for everyone to know their cholesterol numbers?
9. Do they ask when someone is leaving the minute they arrive?
10. Does the conversation always revolve around someone’s child who is “lost” (i.e. not attending college, graduate school or working for a hedge fund?)
Cautionary Note: The person who came up with the term PAA is not a licensed physician but has empirical evidence on PAA‘s impact on optimism, enthusiasm, and scrupulous reading of the obits.
Luckily I only know of a couple of mild cases around me who exhibit the odd symptom.
A big THANK YOU for your brilliant book – I love it!
It’s changed my life more in a week than a therapist could do in a year.
Oh Andrea! How the therapists must love reading your words! I appreciate the ^5 on the book and congratulate you on hangin’ with the positive types and not the dyspeptic types that make me so tired. Youse great!
I aged just by reading this post!
I was hoping to shave ten years off your life….
you’re a social search engine all by yourself
and a pretty one too 
Toodles
Sreemanti Sengupta
Oh dear. You’re making me blush. (I was waiting to hear from you. You have spoiled me!)
hahas! Actually I couldn’t comment on the last post on friends. Beautifully written, but then, frienships have not really worked for me. It’s sad. And I get sadder when everybody seems to drench in it joyously. Am the troubled kind. But you Ellen, is a friend I treasure. So there.
friends then?
Sreemanti Sengupta
P.S. – Ellen, you’re powerful with wit and words. (refer ‘youse’ and ‘^5′ )
Dear Jobless/Jobbed: I request that you say hello today to a stranger. Just smile and say hello. Take a baby step. As for friends, r u kidding me? I treasure you. I will give you another assignment next week after I receive your report from the “say hello to a stranger.”