Book excerpt: A laugh-out-loud spin on the realities, perks, opportunities, and inevitable courses of midlife. Laurie Notaro has proved everyone wrong: she didn't end up in rehab, prison, or cremated at a tender age. She just went gray. At past fifty, every hair's root is a symbol of knowledge (she knows how to use a landline), experience (she rode in a car with no seat belts), and superpowers (a gray-haired lady can get away with anything). Though navigating midlife is initially upsetting--the cracking noises coming from her new old body, receiving regular junk mail from mortuaries--Laurie accepts it. And then some. With unintentional abandon, she shoplifts a bag of russet potatoes. Heckles a rude driver from her beat-up Prius. And engages in epic trolling on Nextdoor.com. That, says Laurie, is the brilliance of growing older. With each passing day, you lose an equivalent amount of fear. And the #1 New York Times bestselling author has never been so fearlessly funny as she is in this empowering, candid, and enlightening memoir about living life on the other side of fifty.