My friend Jeanne is remarkably on-time.

When she is picking me up if she says she will be there at 9:20 that’s exactly when she arrives. Not 9:15 and not 9:30 but right on the button at 9:20.

She’s never early and never late. If by chance something happens and she is running late she calls to let me know.

She is so exceptionally punctual that I make jokes she must wait around the corner so she can pull up exactly as she promised.

This week Jeanne was supposed to come to my house at 3:30 to swim then we were going out to dinner.

When she wasn’t there by 4:00 I figured she got held up. When she wasn’t there by 5 I kept checking my cellphone to see if she left a message.

By the time it was almost 6 and she still wasn’t there I confess I started to panic.

This week she had to change the locks on her house because of a bit of a problem with a relative.

I kept thinking she was in trouble. The more I worried, the more bad scenarios I conjured up in my mind.

When she finally arrived after 6 o’clock she claimed she told me she would be there after she took her grandson shopping.

“I know we always swim at 3:30 but I warned you I would not be there until after the shopping trip,” she said. She couldn’t understand why I was so worried.

I clearly heard her say she would be there in the afternoon. I told Jeanne I wouldn’t have worried so much if she hadn’t had a potential problem that required changing locks on her house.

I pictured someone breaking in and harming her.

AWWWWW. Help. I’m turning into my mother?

If I was 10 minutes late in driving two hours to her house, she was panicked.

“I was sure you got in accident or something happened to you,” she always said.

I couldn’t understand why 10 minutes late translated into an accident in her mind.

I never understood why she did so much unnecessary worrying.

Now, here I am, doing the same thing. It must be age.

Do we worry more when we’re older?

Social scientists say yes, we do.

When I was young my dad’s big worry was that I would never live into adulthood because I did too many dumb, dangerous things. I curled up inside a truck tire and rolled down a hill, never worrying about cars or how I would stop.

My dad claimed I had absolutely no fear of anything and needed to develop a sense of caution.

There was one traumatic time for my mother in a department store when I went up to pet a donkey that was part of the Christmas display.

The donkey clamped down on my hand and wouldn’t let go. My mother was screaming as much as I was until an attendant convinced the donkey to let go of my hand by offered the animal a carrot.

A few month later I suffered another bite when I tried to pet a dog on a train.

My dad asked why I wouldn’t learn a lesson.

Because I was a kid, that’s why. And kids don’t worry or think about consequences.

Fortunately, when my own kids came out of the womb they arrived with a healthy degree of caution and smarts.

Then I was the parent there to warn them of any of life’s pitfalls.

But I didn’t worry excessively. That was my mother’s job.

The worrying didn’t come until decades later.

Here in Florida I never worried about alligators and never worried about hurricanes until Hurricane Ira came along and changed all that.

When people asked why I wasn’t afraid to kayak with so many nearby alligators I told them there’s never been a time when an alligator ate a kayaker.

Worrying about a hurricane is a different story. Along with destroyed homes the hurricane left some of us with post-traumatic stress syndrome.

One friend says a forecast of storms and high winds can bring her to her knees.

One of the things I keep trying to improve is how to worry less and enjoy each day of life more.

I will never again be as carefree as a kid. But I’m trying hard not to turn into my worrywart mother.

One thing that helps me is trying to follow the advice of worrying only about the day at hand.

I’m also trying not to worry about what might happen. There is time enough time to worry if it does happen…no need to practice ahead of time.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of worrying about the next hurricane because we know how devastating a hurricane can be. But when my mind drifts into that worry I censor my thoughts and say I am going to only worry about the day at hand.

One author calls it living within the grace of one day.

My father was probably right when he said I had no fear and no sense of caution when I was much younger. I now have what is often too much of both.

Let me ask readers this. Do you find as you get older you worry more than you did when you were younger?

Contact Pattie Mihalik at newsgirl@comcast.net.