The first time I carpooled with an SUV full of that age group usually called "older," I thought I'd never learn all their names.

Now, two years later, I still occasionally consult the list of approximately 25 women who exercise together, but, truth be told, I know far more about their medical and familial histories than I know about their names.

The names ebb and flow, as their owners take time off for cataract surgery, visits of old friends, and the arrival of new great-grandbabies. Some leave and never find their way back, but their names live on in exercises they introduced: Joan's stretch. Sarah's hand exercise. Vivian's back stretch.

If the rest of them are like me, exercise is right up there with flossing teeth on my list of least-favorite things to do. We hang in, though, knowing we'll be glad we did it. We don't necessarily expect to cure our arthritic backs and knees, but would be glad just to keep them from getting worse.

A few of "the girls" have had really serious medical problems, and a few of them are made of stainless steel.

And probably more than half of them are widows.

So, yeah, there's a social element to our class and in the two hours a week we spend commuting. If there's a whiner, I haven't met her. Most of these ladies are survivors who have seen too many of their sisters, parents, friends die early deaths because they let themselves become obese and sedentary.

These women have looked Mortality in the eye and so far have backed him down.

On occasion the conversation turns hilarious, as it did last week. I've kicked myself again and again for not carrying a tape recorder in a pocket where I can turn it on unnoticed.

Now, dear male readers, this might be a good time to turn the page and see what Mike Boylan thinks of the summer's big movies. I don't want to embarrass anyone who has never said the word "menstruation" out loud in a crowd, or even just in front of his mother-in-law. Michael's been married long enough that he should know all about the feminine anatomy and its function, but I bet he's still not comfortable discussing it in mixed company.

OK, you had your chance.

I'm not sure how we got on the subject of menstruation, but every one of us, aged from about 60 to mid-80s, came from an era when no one, male or female, discussed any aspect of reproduction. Or s-e-x, as we put it. Indeed, most of them said the first time they knew anything about menstruation was the day it happened to them.

Cynthia ran to her mother when she discovered her own stained clothes. Her reward was a slap across her face from her grandmother. "Why did she do that?" we gasped. "I donno," Cynthia mused. "Some sort of tradition, I guess."

I must say, my mother had plenty of time to tell me about monthly periods - mine didn't start until I was 14 - and thought herself very progressive. It's my father I really admired. We lived in the country, and Mom didn't drive, so the only way she could get anything from a drugstore or food market was to call Daddy before he left work. Mom was very matter-of-fact about it, slipping the words in between a dozen oranges and a box of elbow macaroni.

What really intrigued me about our conversation last week was how we tried, as girls, to cover up this awful fact of life. In south-central Pennsylvania, if Millie missed school or couldn't go swimming, it was because she "fell off the roof." Somehow we felt that such a descriptive, spoken out confidently, would disguise what really happened. It meant she had The Curse, another euphemism.

That Millie came