One week from today, I celebrate a milestone that has been the butt of jokes for as long as jokes have existed. I turn that age Jack Benny refused to turn.

The big four-oh.

Am I happy about that? Well, yes and no. I’ll be happy to still be here to turn something. But I’m not delighted that what I’ll be turning will be an age that marks the official end to my thirties.

Leaving my twenties wasn’t a big deal for me. I didn’t dread 30 like so many other people I went to school with. I still laugh at people who make such a big deal out of turning 30, because there’s absolutely nothing that’s different about being 30 than being 29.

Turning 35 bothered me, though. And that, in all honesty, caught me completely off guard. It didn’t dawn on me how much it really bothered me until the first time I had to fill out some kind of form after I hit 35. For age, it didn’t ask specifics, but wanted you to mark the age range into which you fell.

For the first time in a decade, I was no longer part of the 25-34 range. I was in the next box, where the upper limit was into the mid-forties.

I’m pretty sure that 40 was the first age that my dad claimed he’d never reach when I was little. My dad has his melodramatic moments, and for years as I grew up, he would disasterize his stress level or his health, and so he’d say things like, “I’ll never see 40.”

I think it was when he was 38 or so that 40 became 45.

And every few years, it would jump to the next five-year milestone. Sixty was the last age he predicted he’d never reach, after mom and I threatened, in as nice a way possible, to help him achieve his apparent goal of an early exit if he didn’t shut up about it.

Last week, he turned 66, so it’s clear that not worrying about how soon he’ll expire seems to be working just as well as constantly worrying about it. And it’s a lot easier, too.

I’m not about to start such speculation.

While I’m not wild about the idea of turning 40, it definitely beats the alternative.