The nineties. My birthday day. 40 years. I go in a semi-empty bus with sad thoughts like forty years old – there is no money, and there will be no money... and where do they get from an engineer... and what is there in front of them if at this age they don’t get a job? Those who were grown up in those years remember that "destruction in their heads."

A decent man enters the bus and sits next to me. Fuck, there was no other place for him... It would be OK to just sit, but he needs to “talk?” It begins to cling to my appearance.
Why do you wear a beard? Shrine, I am telling you. You look 40 years old with this beard.
How much do I really?
“Twenty-five,” he looked at me doubtingly, “well, twenty-seven.
There are 40. and today.
The man was upset and didn’t talk to me anymore, but a good mood was made not just for the rest of the day.

Twenty years have passed since then, during which time I have twice turned my life very cold, traveled around the world, was relatively rich and relatively poor, and I know for sure that "at forty it just begins." A lot is ahead even now.

P.S The beard was not broken.