Fact: Parents worry. It’s part of the job description. Worrying about everything from their children’s hair and hem lengths to matters of heart and mind, life and death, parents have been pacing since Adam and Eve fretted over sibling rivalry.

I’ve felt the earth move under my feet and, with all due respect to singer-songwriter extraordinaire Carole King, it’s terrifying. Moreover, my life as I knew it — not the sky — came tumbling down, tumbling down.

We all have these “things.”  You know, the “things” we pick up through osmosis during our youth, simply by growing up with our parents. I don’t mean genetic things like thunder thighs or premature graying, but things that automatically, quietly stick to us like sand on wet skin.

“OK, I’ll drive,” slurs an inebriated teen, anxious to make curfew after a night furtively drinking with buddies.

“OK, just this once,” whispers a recklessly insecure eighth-grader to her impatient and promiscuous boyfriend.

“OK” is the sound of an undeveloped life spontaneously combusting, as a pipe packed with poison and synthetic feelings passes from one young hand to another.

Knocking off the long-reigning “Whatever!” from its top spot on my “Obnoxious Adolescent Expressions” list is the newly inducted, passive-aggressive, “Just kidding!” Right now, a Merriam-Webster American Slang editor is monitoring its usage in anticipation of adding “jk” (text message shorthand) someplace between the equally profound “jive turkey” and “Just Say No.”

Don’t yank my string! Menopausal wisdom is a myth.

Menopause snuck up on me. Unlike far-sightedness and varicose veins, which I simply woke up with one day, the winding down of my reproductive system was not as sudden ... or obvious. It took me some time to admit that global warming may not be causing me to overheat like aluminum foil in a microwave. At 45, menopause wasn’t on my “to do” list. And being the high priestess of list-making, if it wasn’t on my list, it didn’t exist.

Parenthood isn’t so much a stage you enter as it’s another dimension that devours you — body, soul, car keys and all. It’s a permanent “condition” that enters the bloodstream, travels to the brain and infects your pre-parenting world view. Similar to the Men in Black “neuralizer” (the flashy thingy), becoming someone’s mom or dad obliterates all memory of what life was like BK … Before Kids.