According to a recent British survey conducted for a health-care and insurance firm, here are a few of the signs one has crossed the Rubicon into middle age. Here are some from the UK list that I’ve noticed in myself:

●Hating noisy pubs

●Getting more hairy — ears, eyebrows, nose, face, etc.

●Thinking policemen/teachers/doctors look really young

●Preferring a night in with a board game than a night on the town

●You don’t know any songs in the top 10

●When you know your alcohol limit

Also, from my own list:

●Having trouble hearing

●Forgetting names easily

●Thinking that all music on the radio sounds the same (and that it’s all crap)

●Finding a Strange New Respect for books and music that were too complicated or fusty to bother with

●Finding a Strange New Disrespect for books, movies, and music that I once loved, seeing them as too shrill, shallow, whatever

●Losing political and religious idealism, and becoming both more cynical and more tolerant

●Seeing the resurgence of hairstyles from my youth, and wondering why they look so stupid on young people these days when they looked so great on us

●A general hatred of how noisy the world is (e.g., people have TV on all the time, and the people on TV are so aggressive and stupid)

●A disinterest in going to the movies because there’s nothing interesting to watch

●Puzzling over how young people can stand drinking all that sweet booze

●The depressing realization that my fat pants are now my standard pants

●Realizing that my teenage son looks great in my hand-me-down shirts and sweaters, which means a) that I have a son tall and broad enough to wear my own clothes, and b) that I’m now too fat to wear the clothes I used to look good in

What signs have you noticed in your middle age?