Her life was proceeding — more or less — pleasantly until a winter walk with her dog put it into an entirely new perspective.

With Stephen King-like chilling precision, Janet Torge recalls tripping over some invisible object in the middle of the sidewalk — be it due to slipping on ice or her pooch pursuing a squirrel — and finding herself stunned, aching and immobile on the ground, searching frantically for a parking meter or fence “so you can drag your bag of bones into a vertical position.”

The horror, the horror. And one that will hit home for many.

And with her tumble came this realization: “I can’t believe I’m old.”

And so these words became the perfectly succinct title to Torge’s new book: I Can’t Believe I’m Old is part memoir/part instructional. This chronicle of her aging process, complemented by counsel for seniors, is extremely funny yet extremely frank with gusts to morose.

Those of us who have known Torge for decades may well have believed she was ageless. Torge has done everything over the years: she has produced a flurry of excellent TV documentaries; she has written a column for The Gazette; she penned a searing book, Dear Sam, about the tragic death of one of her two sons; she was a Radio Noon host at CBC Montreal; she helmed an overnight radio show on CFCF; she did radio traffic reports; she has been an activist on a variety of human-rights issues; she has even been a birth doula.

And that just covers her life in Montreal the last 40 years or so. Evidently, the first half of her existence in her native Ohio, Toronto and Vancouver........

© Montreal Gazette