The media portrays the Boomers as old hippies out to graze. Actually, that doesn’t sound so bad. But it is not exact. We are the same scholars and philosophers of a generation at the forefront of human rights since our inception. The crowd of over forty-five who is determined to resist antiquity with every healthy breath. We will not go out to graze. We remain the mainstream of society. We are the Bushes and the Clintons. Hillary and Pelosi. The Oprahs, Lenos and Borat. Susan Sarandon and Jack Nicholson. Lucas and Brokaw. We are students and soldiers, the children of the greatest generation. We are Baby Boomers and we live proud.
We start by ending Vietnam and we will do everything we can to end Iraq. What we will not do is go pasture. Let’s go to the gym. We are American society. We are parents and represent the most powerful financial and political factions in society. So we rewrite the rules and do it again. Especially the rules of aging. We will resist the stereotypes of old as we care for our parents in their later years. But we have the final third of our lives to live like never before. Time to team up again for Boomer Power.
Still resisting antiquity
I just accepted the fact that I will never be a major league baseball star. It does not matter that he is ten years older than the oldest player. Never mind that my peak was in Men’s “C” Softball over ten years ago. Never mind that I still refuse to accept even the notion of arthritis. I’m still making it sound like I can. I have a boomer mindset, a boomer wife at the gym, and a late boomer kid putting it all in perspective.
Watch out for the boomers, we are here to stay. We love our country and we are still running it our way. Do not look in the villages of the elderly, you will not find us there. No baby boomers worth their salt will become a senior without a fight. We can withdraw, but not from society. They educated us to put up good fights at least when it came to being told what to do. Officially, boomers were born between 1946 and 1964. We were the first babies after the bomb, the first generation raised on television, the first generation of the man on the moon, the Woodstock generation, the generation that said, “Hell no, we will not go “and” Burn the bra “. We are not going to become old people no matter how old we are.
You can tell a boom from across the room, but you can’t tell it much. We are beginning to forget what the youth of today have yet to discover. We can be yuppies or grandmothers. We can still mix it up with whatever bureaucracy it throws at us. We burn our draft cards and we will burn our AARP cards too. We were never anti-American, only against the war, against the system. We can take it, we can distribute it and you can push it where the sun doesn’t shine. You mess with a boom and you’re ruining it. Our parents won the big one, World War II, and we came after the party that followed. We are the first generation of privileges, the generation of buttons and we are going to live longer than anyone before us. And before we forget everything we knew, we will make our mark.
We don’t need stinky senior cards. We have cars that are bigger and faster. Our houses are bigger and easier to live in. We have microwaves, automatic garage openers, maids, babysitters, and gardeners. We have first few interest-only trust loans, home equity lines, and reverse mortgages on the way. We have our parents in nursing homes and our children in daycare after school. We have Prozac, Xanax, and Viagara, honey. We can turn, we can hurry, and we can take two steps. We are working and training, re-sculpting our minds and our bodies and we are not going to be left out of the next phase. Our perspectives are broader and our crotches are tailor-made. We are badder and better, “bada-bing, bada-boom.”
Gen “X” and “Y”, their numbers have not yet been called. We have taken over your computers and are mastering our skills. We already live in our retirement homes and we plan to live off them as well. We were born in world peace and we resist war. When we were teenagers, we refused to accept the status quo and set out to change the world. We found the best life our parents wanted for us. We have it now and we are going to keep it. We own our own parcel of land and we are not ready to give it up yet. Call us boomers or don’t call us at all. We don’t need a call because we are already here and we are still going strong. We keep singing our songs and dancing our dance. We’ve turned society around, we’ve built our dream homes, and now we’re resisting age. God help us. We are not done yet. We just started fighting … and living.
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