Baby Bloomers Once considered by historians as “Baby Boomers,” we are now labeled, “Baby Bloomers.” We shuddder at the term as our arthritic joints and numerous pills increase daily. A veritable demographic juggernaut, our quite contented generation dashed into this world between 1940 and 1955. We tremble in a sea of incredulity, attempting to explain where the years went and how they sped by us at lightning speed. We love to tell our stories to our grandkids – for the hundredth time -- of how we “walked to school for miles in the snow with no shoes” – a fictional exaggeration inducing our grandkids’ legitimate disbelief; of listening on the phone first before dialing our number to make sure no one else was on our “party line”; of the local pharmacist rushing the needed medicine to our door within minutes of our doctor’s house call who himself had just departed minutes earlier; of the Variety-store owner putting our balance “on the tab” because we were short of funds; of how we consistently played 45’s on our RCA phonograph, knew that I-pods were probably something out in the garden, and that gay folks were simply happy ones; of being labeled as juvenile delinquents at school for tripping pretty girls, shooting rubber bands, and flying paper airplanes -- and dreading the consequences of misbehavior at home more than we did at school. We never feared walking our inner-city neighborhoods at night. When we raised the hood of our cars, we could actually see the engine and our neighbors could solve their picayune frictions without contacting a lawyer. We now shyly hand our new I-phones to our grandkids, asking them quietly to show us how its numerous imbedded toys work. It’s not that we can’t understand the manual. We simply can’t see it. We refuse to retrieve our high school microscope from our dust-ridden attic to read the manual’s minutiae-print of 35 pages, two of which are written in English and 33 in foreign languages. We believe our grandkids are infinitely enthusiastic in hearing our exaggerated, boring stories of our numerous ailments and surgeries that cause the 15 prescription bottles to adorn our kitchen table; of how we love to distinguish their hard-acid-rock noise from our memorable and low-audible rock ‘n roll 50’s music. We see a quick smile on the grandkids’ faces when they scream, “Grandpa, are you deaf?” and we reply, “No, I just can’t hear you,” as we glance at the Christmas-gift-plaque, “Don’t make fun of my age or I’ll hit you with my cane.” |
As Golden-Age Bloomers, we feel we are ahead of the game when we simply wake up. Our achievement for the day is making the morning coffee. We refuse to drink it. We simply sip it. Indigestion will encompass our lives if we don’t. We don’t answer the phone because we don’t hear it. The installed red alert light on its top proves nil. We can’t see it. Invoking the infinite excuse, “I’ll get my cataract surgeries done soon” doesn’t help. Our weekly outing is driving to church on Sunday mornings. Looking under the steering wheel as we proceed to go 15 mph in a 45 mph zone, we hope we remember the difference between the accelerator and brake pedals. We haven’t had to stop for gas for weeks. The “E” on the dashboard gauge tells us it’s “Everlasting” – in direct contrast to our hearing-aid batteries which we haven’t replaced in 10 years, the main excuse we use to tell others why we didn’t hear the train coming. We still love so many young people, all of whom seem to constitute the rest of society. We’re labeled as “Codgers,” Retirees,” “Old Fogies,” and quite euphemistically, “Senior Citizens.” Simple translation via the young: We are dumb; we know nothing. We are now out in the pasture doing nothing but perambulating and grazing on the lush green grass, eating and sleeping at will. We know nothing about the labyrinth of the vile business-world deceptions of purchasing a car, returning a product for a refund, combating denials of health-insurance claims, or challenging other mega-conglomerates when they unabashedly attempt to make us victims of their duping sales’ gimmicks. We know nothing about investments, real-estate purchasing/selling or simple things as liquid assets. To the younger generations, our days are simply spent feebly wondering what we will do for the remaining days of what we now know as the last third of our lives, forever stamped as “The Golden Age.” We’re still foolishly searching for the gold. In turn, as we too often witness the younger generations’ lack of work ethics, their vacuous passion and dedication to their families; their passivity in acquiring an education, their too-often warped ladder of hierarchy of values, their complacency of society’s numerous ills, especially in the political world, we old codgers often wonder, “What will we do with you?” Our wisdom and experience in making such statements as “Life is short” rewards us with nothing but a confounding, blank stare. WJK May.-2012 |
