When my brother was about three years old he went to my mother, so the story goes, and told her he wanted a little sister and he was going to call her Betty Jane. My mother always gave my brother anything he wanted and so it came to pass that I was born on this day 84 years ago. And I was christened Betty Jane. Not Elizabeth, just Betty. No hyphen, either, Just Betty Jane. And I've been trying to get people to call me my whole name ever since. It has become a knee-jerk reflex, when people call me Betty I answer Jane. I finally started writing my name on my e-mail signature as Bettyjane, all one word, and I write it like that, too,with the J of Jane overlapping the y of /betty. It seems to help. If you Google Betty Jane, you'll find me first or second on the list. I'm not like Cher or Madonna or Beyoncé, I mean, it's not a brand name, but it will do.

My family used to call me B.J. when I was little and I didn't mind but when I grew up I noticed that some people balked at the double-barrelled moniker and called me BeeJay to the exclusion of my given name. So when I came east I didn't tell my nickname. Unfortunately a couple I knew in Winnipeg lived in my apartment building and I could tell whom they knew and that they talked about me because B.J. was like a contagious virus and spread, air-borne. Occasionally, people ask me if I am called B.J.and I say "only in moments of passion." It doesn't work.

See, I have to have both names. when I was a child I didn't have an imaginary friend. I didn't need one; I had me, that is, I had Betty and I had Jane. Betty was nasty so I had to have Jane with us, always. She was nicer. She still is. I'm lucky to have her.

I have this huge clipping file on aging now and even though I have "finished" (inasmuch as anyone finishes anything) my book on aging, I am still collecting comments and insights.

Tomorrow I will have completed my 84th year and will start on my 85th. (My father used to point out that distinction.) Next year I will be 85 and I'm going to have a big party. I just hope that enough people I know are still alive and able to attend it.

An American gerontologist, Dr. Robert Butler, who died in 2010, gave an interview less than two weeks before he died and made some astute comments on aging and the efforts old people make to keep up with the Juniors. Quoted in the New York Times, he said, "I think we ought to have a realistic portrait of all different periods of life and not try to romanticize old age as the most wonderful, all these great old wise people. I think that goes too far."

Dr. Anne Basting is the director of the Centre on Age and Community at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, author of Forget Memory: Creating Better Lives for People with Dementia (2009), and founder of the Time Slips Project (look her up; she's fascinating). She says we go from one extreme to another. "It's either the stories of young-onset Alzheimer's, or it's the sky-diving grandmas. We don't hear enough about the huge middle, which is the vast majority of folks." Try getting Jullianne Moore to play a frumpy, dumpy, happy grandmother.

"Anything you do, people are just shocked that your'e alive," Dr. Basting said. "There's no expectations at 90."

Well, I do. I do have expectations but I'm only (almost) 84.