“Surprise, surprise, surprise.” These words rattle around in my head as spoken in the naïve voice of Gomer Pyle, a fictional marine recruit who anchored a sitcom series in the late 1960s.

Like Gomer, we’ve all had surprises in life and two weeks ago in a Crow’s Feet writing prompt we asked people to write about what surprised them about getting old. We received 18 responses.

“I didn’t know I was aging until someone told me,” wrote Ellen Baker.