Having been born at the end of the Baby Boom (1961), I don't have the experiences that the stereotypical "baby boomer" is supposed to have had. Newsweek has been pandering to gain subscribers doing a series of articles for the last year about the Baby Boomers. One of the first had a cover with pictures of Baby Boomers who were turning 60 last year (I just turned 45 a few months ago). One thing that I noticed that the pictured Boomers had in common was that almost all of them had starred in, or appeared on, TV shows that I was too young to watch in the 60's and 70's. So why am I supposed to be in the same generation?! - which is why the whole thing irritates me. My supposed "generation" feels like it has little to do with my life and experience - or the lives and experiences of others born in the late 50's and early 60's.
During the "Summer of Love," I think I was learning how to ride my bike.
I appreciated Ellen Goodman's opinion column, "The age of the Boomers is showing," printed in today's Raleigh News and Observer:
Somehow I do not think that Barack Obama gets up in the morning,
brushes his teeth, looks in the mirror and says, "Wow! A fresh face!"
It doesn't happen at 45. At 45, you count the crow's feet and measure
the circles under your eyes... [We'll skip the part about how Mozart & others didn't even live to be this age]
I say this to add a dose of reality to the chatter about the man
slated to announce his candidacy for president on Feb. 10. Obama is
indeed this year's designated "fresh face." But on the flip side, those
who are not questioning whether the Illinois senator is too black to be
president are asking whether he is too green.
That's not green as
in tree-hugging. That's green as in inexperienced and/or young. Even
his little daughter once asked, "Are you going to try to be president?
Shouldn't you be the vice president first?"
...
But I find it bewildering to hear so many Americans worrying that a
man who is middle-aged, by any demographic measure, might be too young.
The question -- "how green is Obama?" -- may say less about the
senator's youth than the country's age. Or the baby boomers aging.
In
1960, the average age of Americans was 29. Today it's 36 and climbing.
In 1960, the life expectancy was 69. Now it's 77. More to the point,
the baby boomer generation that is forever setting the agenda has begun
turning 60.
Most of the green-talk is indeed from boomers, a
generation that was just coming of age -- teenage -- when Jack Kennedy
was killed at 46. Is it possible that the same generation that famously
didn't trust anybody over 30 when they were 20 doesn't trust anybody
under 50 now that they are turning 60? [emphasis mine]
One of the charms of the boomers, the watermelon in the demographic
python, is how they are managing to age without getting old. My
favorite factoid comes from a Yankelovich study showing that boomers
define "old age" as starting three years after the average American is
dead. It's a new wrinkle on the 1965 song by "The Who": "I hope I die
before I get old."
But the side effect of feeling forever young
is that boomers may regard their juniors as perennially too young. It's
seen in the generational lament about the adult children who can't get
launched. It's also seen in the boomers' defense of their (primary)
place in the pecking order.
Obama was technically born at the
tail end of the boom, but places himself politically outside the
"psychodrama of the baby boom generation" which he describes as "a tale
rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college
campuses long ago." [I'm outside that psychodrama too]
...
Well, it's a shock when the people you went to high school with
start ruling the world. It's another rite of passage to acknowledge
juniors as your superiors. But boomers are now turning 60 with a life
expectancy of 82. It's an early sign of memory loss to forget that at
45 you were wise or foolish, or both -- but you weren't young. [sigh]
That
master of the last word, Oscar Wilde, said, "Experience is the name
everyone gives to their mistakes." He figured that out at 39.
This all, of course, reminds me of a song, "Born A Little Late (The Baby Boomer Song)," by Susan Werner from Follow That Road (an excellent folk music CD from the second annual Martha's Vineyard Singer/Songwriter's Retreat).
She's four years younger than I am, but she has similar experiences - except, being a folk singer, it probably comes up more often for her:
I was four years old in nineteen-sixty-nine
When everybody had their thing and I had mine
There were some people smoking weed, there were some others doing speed
But I was way big into raisins at the time
And now I'm all grown up and I'm a-writing a-folky songs
But there are people telling me that I don't belong
These folk music consumers are Birkenstock-ed baby boomers
They say, "You're way too young and you dress completely wrong"
They say, "You showed up just in time to miss the boat
You slept right through our rendezvous with fate
And though we're getting old and grey we still can gloat
Must be a thorn to have been born a little late"
That's what they say
Yes they were all at Yasgur's farm in 'sixty-nine (right)
They all made love to Country Joe and Johnny Prine (uh-huh)
And every one of them adored young Bonnie Raitt (they all knew her personally)
They love to tell me I was born a little late
And at folk festivals I've seen them a-hanging around
I've seen them having sex and sleeping on the ground
They'll all be sitting around the campfire singing Beatles and The Byrds
And then they laugh at me 'cos I don't know the words...
Don't miss the spoken section where she talks about how people describe driving VW buses around: "And all the owners would wave at each other. It was like this giant club, and it was all ... so ...wonderfully ...different." [?!]
I have no 60's nostalgia whatsoever.
