“Hey,” I catch myself thinking about my book every so often, “I’m fifty already!” Amazed, I shake my head. “Wrong,” I correct myself quickly enough, “you’re seventy-nine.” Indeed, I was twenty-nine when I started my book of books, and I was thirty by this time of that fateful year. And it was 1976 of all years. “Nineteen seventy-six,” I pronounce it out loud. Amazed again, I raise my eyebrows. “Ah,” I do my best to calm myself down, “only numbers!” Twenty-nine, thirty, fifty, seventy-nine… To my chagrin, the very same numbers cross my mind a bit too often for my comfort—say, at least once a fortnight. “Only numbers,” I frown by way of conclusion, “my ass!”