If I had read the same stories 10 years ago, I would have shrugged them off as so many words that had no impact on my life. Unfortunate for those post-menopausal women taking the drug, I would have said, but no impact on my 40-something life.

Now, when anything affects post-menopausal women or, worse yet, women in the middle of the screaming, sweating, hot-flashing-to-near-insanity condition known as menopause, I am forced to take notice.

Everything that has to do with the postwar baby-boom generation — that's us folks who were born between 1946 and 1964 — is always big news. One reason it's big news is because there are so many of us, and we are now running the world. It may be hard to believe, but the president of the United States is one of us — and a lot of other folk in high positions are baby boomers.

So when half of us start to sweat like professional wrestlers for no apparent reason and howl at the moon at the same time, people are going to take notice. I mean, this could be dangerous.

Speaking strictly for myself (the half of the Johnston couple that doesn't sweat and howl), I find this menopause stuff unsettling to my normally quiet life. At the same time the Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston is going nuts on me, our children are passing through their teenage years. And guess what?

They're going nuts, too!

As one guy who is at the head of the postwar baby boom, Birthing Class of '46, I feel there is an obligation on my part to warn the other males coming behind me that nature has a cruel trick in store for you. Just when you finally stop worrying about your teenager getting behind the wheel of the family car and running over you, you have to start worrying about your wife creeping up behind you with a butcher knife, muttering under her breath about you not picking up a wet towel from the bathroom floor.

For some reason, nature decided it would be fun to arrange it so that at the same time a teenager's hormones are going out of whack, a mother's hormones would also start tipping over the edge.

Even more fun is to leave the male in the middle, afraid that if he says anything to either one of these hormonally challenged individuals, he is putting his life in danger.

Even writing this warning column to other males has put my life in danger. Mrs. Johnston just crept up behind me to see what I was doing. "What are you writing?" she asked. "You're not making fun of me, I hope."

Luckily I was able to tell that she was approaching when a couple of drops of sweat fell on the floor and I felt the heat radiating from her flashes. I could also hear the butcher knife being moved from one hand to the other.

"Oh no, dear," I squealed, quickly switching the computer screen to my fake screen saver of "Wild Women Wrestlers."

"Just checking the wrestling scores."

It was a close call, but I feel it is important to send out this warning to those young guys coming up behind us old guys:

Watch your backs, boys. They've got us surrounded!