Then there are those who prefer the places where they are on the younger end. I — as of this moment a fit 65 — do my lifting and stretching at the 92nd Street Y, where they still lament that Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis broke up. This is one of the last places I am considered a kid. My 90-year-old aunt accuses me of showing up at her assisted living facility so often because I am far and away the youngest person on the premises.

Why some of us cope better with the troubling transition may be based on how we measure our self-esteem. “If a person bases his or her pride of self on having won a tournament at 18, they are very vulnerable later on,” says Dr. Gould. “There’s money, there are houses, there are face-lifts. They all help a little, but none matters enough unless your sense of self is not directly related to age.”

Even deciding whether or not to color our hair, not to mention take advantage of cosmetic procedures, presents a boomer dilemma: Can we stay true to our feminism while ceding to our narcissism? In her memoir, Hillary Rodham Clinton writes about being the toughest in the rooms where war and peace were discussed. Still, she is already seeing that her health, fatigue-factor, and even becoming a grandmother may yet speak unspoken volumes. It won’t be much fun being the oldest in the race.

The uh-oh moments, of course, do not come only when we look around that proverbial room and find that everyone else looks like they just attended their bar or bat mitzvah. But the ones that tend to gnaw are when someone gets up to offer you a seat, calls you ma’am, asks if you have grandchildren. Desperately seeking compliments can become a full-time job.

Rather than going gently into mentor mode I have now entered the Extreme Sport of the Boomer Challenge, returning to college after 40 gap years. Sitting in Columbia University classrooms, where I am the oldest and dumbest, I see the eyes rolling, For example, among my three assigned partners with whom I would be doing a 20-page report on Coney Island. But I saw them soften when they learned that I had a car and connections, and could edit. It’s a daily challenge — but how many have both student and senior IDs?

And I am learning some lessons of another kind. For example, never start a sentence with, “When I was your age...” or “In my day...” Do not attempt to show that while you may look old, you’re still 22 inside. Even if you know who Schoolboy Q is, don’t brag, because you’ll get something wrong eventually. Like too many cosmetic procedures, rather than youthenizing us, they only make us seem older.

Berkeley Blatz, 65, who has been teaching in the Santa Monica, Calif., schools for more than 30 years, says being the oldest in the room actually became easier once his own acceptance kicked in and he acknowledged he was one of us and not one of them. “Interestingly, the older I get, the more connectivity I have with the students,” he says. “They tolerate more from me, and I from them.”