Peter, my baby, my teenager, my tennis partner for 30 years, who now vigorously covers 90 percent of the court when we are doubles parfners. Peter -- old? I mean really old? Like me? Yes, as I see the child in the man, I can see the elderly in the man, now strong in his middle years.

Every Wednesday from 8 to 10 a.m. i have a tennis game with my two sons and a fourth. Spring to fall, we play on the public courts in Central Park around 95th Street. In the winter, we play indoors at Midtown Tennis Club, 8th Avenue and 27th Street.

If you could read only two pages of The New York Times, which would you choose? I would choose the front page and the obituary page. When I come home from a trip, I dash through the papers and scan those two pages. I have to know who, among my friends and acquaintances, kicked the bucket.

I am part of a NYC lunch group that has met for lunch once a month for the past fifteen years and is still going strong. There are six of us, all in our mid-eighties. Some of us have been friends for 72 years; others, a mere 50 years.

At other ages I was defined by what I did. Schoolboy, father, husband, stockbroker, writer. Now, if there was only one thing you could know about me -- just one -- I would choose that you know I'm 85.