I just realized that I will turn forty in exactly eight months. When my father was my age, he was married, had four children, he was preparing to take the bar exam, had already gone through a bankruptcy, had run the Southern California operations for two presidential campaigns, been the chief assistant to the State Assembly Rules Committee, and had run for office twice (unsuccessfully). He used the occasion of the big 4-0 to quit drinking, thereby changing the life of our family dramatically. I still think about him every day, and occasionally will dream he is still with us, having rationalized that sometime after his death, his cancer went into remission and he was miraculously resuscitated. The only edges I have on my dad is that I passed the bar exam when I was twenty-six, (although, unlike him, I loved the whole experience of taking the test so much, I took it twice), and that, in spite of a lifetime of incurring debt, I have yet to file a BK. There's still time, however....