2002-08-30 - 11:49 p.m.
Baby Boomers. Sometimes I wonder how many times I will have to hear that in my life, and how much more absurd the whole thing will become. It is probably a useless emotion to be tired of something over which you have no control. But I am tired of the whole baby boomer thing. I�m tired of everything it stands for: the worst of American excess. I�m tired of being one whether I want to or not, and I hate the perception that being baby boomer age defines all these things about me. It is a confluence of birth and time that cannot be debated or protested. It is a fact of life, and yet I always imagine myself crawling out from under the big boomer butt and running free, saying �No, that�s not me!�
My family followed the basic baby boomer formula: young couple gets married during the postwar prosperity years, and satisfies everyone�s expectations by having a house full of kids. I doubt that it was perceived as part of a national phenomenon at the time. Almost everyone I knew, growing up, came from multi-child families. There were only two kids in my school who were �onlies� and everybody attributed all kinds of negative qualities to the fact that they were �spoiled.� As far as I was concerned, it was a crowded world: there were kids every where. Even in a small town, there were too many kids in every class for the numbers of desks, and each year the teachers would fly into a panic on the first day of school trying to figure out where to put everyone. Everything we used at school was scarce�books, lockers, sports equipment�and there was always some awkward sharing arrangement going on. There were four other girls with my name in my class, and we had to go by last initials.
And those crowded kids were the great explosive youth movement that shook up the world a few years later. (Or so we thought.) From the vantage point of years, I think now that some good was done, and some damage done, too. Some things needed to be shaken up and protested and brought down, but a lot of what was changed wasn�t changed for the better. For most of us, that time was simply the experience of being in our teens and early twenties, a time of intense anxiety and excitement and idealism and friendship. And since there were so many of us, all of that hormonal energy made the ground shake. Why did it never occur to any of us to rebel against authority in any other way besides joining the freaking crowd? Probably in part because, although we could defy our parents by becoming hippies, we were assured of our acceptance in the society of our many peers. We may have thrown rocks, and had sit-ins, but we also stood in endless lines and faced everything as part of a seething mass. I wonder if some of the rebellion and �dropping out� was a response to the competition we faced for everything we wanted: college, jobs, apartments, love.
I remember wanting to go back to college after my marriage ended. I was twenty-one and broke with a three-year old in tow. My application for financial aid was not even submitted. The financial aid director called me into his office and, barely concealing a sneer, said, �You young divorcees who want to go back to college are a dime a dozen. Why would I give you financial aid when I could give it to some young man who wants to make something of himself?� I wish I had stood up and spit in his face or something, but no, I just shuffled out, discouraged, already feeling as though my life were irrevocably damaged. I did eventually go back to school there and graduate with honors. But I never forgot that awful man, and that phrase he used: a dime-a-dozen.
The thing I have resented most over the years is that corporate America has always been there, figuring out what we want ahead of time and putting a price on it. Somehow they have created our dreams for us, and sold us the accessories. And we have bought it all: clothes, cars, music, hobbies, lifestyles. When they thought we wanted to exercise, they created every possible permutation of exercise equipment, opened thousands of gyms. When we, collectively, got into serious jobs in the eighties, They brought out �Dress for Success,� sold us our blue suits, and the world was all about money and social climbing. The term �yuppies� was first coined for us and when we started having kids late in life, They came up with all the ridiculously expensive baby gear that made kids into appropriate social accessories.
The images and music of our childhood and youth are national cliches. Dick and Jane are on refrigerator magnets. Our old toys become Hallmark Christmas ornaments and key chains. The TV shows of our childhood live on in kitsch and rerun. And will classic rock ever just fade away? How long will we hear it over the muzak in malls and surrealistically blaring from the radio just as though thirty years had not passed? And more importantly, how long will they use it as bait to attract us, believing that we are all so blindly enamored with our youth that we will go to any movie with an oldies soundtrack, or buy any CD that offers warmed over 70�s rock anthems? Along with everything else, They are still making a fortune on the famous babies� refusal to grow up.
And now the talk is all about the aging of the baby boomers. They are all working overtime to give us the La Z Boys and EZ Grips we are all supposed to want. They are building nursing homes and retirement living options as fast as they can. Elastic waistlines are getting an upscale image, and just so you know, bladder control isn�t such a big deal any more. They have decided how we will want to look �just the right loose, expensive (because we have money) layers, and light, expensive (because comfort is so important) sandals. They know we want to gobble vitamins and obsess about cholesterol, look for investment opportunities and vacation on cruise ships. We are fat, rich, vain, and full of ourselves: there�s still lots of money to be made.
Now that we have danced and protested and partied and overachieved and excessed our way through life... we are joining churches, reclaiming our repression. We are buying a million books on how to be spiritual and going to classes on finding our inner selves. Expensive classes with lots of expensive accessory items for sale. We are now self-righteous, too.
I�m not surprised that a lot of younger people hate us. They feel like we ran over the world like a giant centipede, with our many legs, gobbling and trampling everything in our path. They say we�ve hogged all the good jobs and pushed the good life out of their reach. They are sick of hearing about us. They are tired of being in the shadow of the world�s biggest bulge. And I don�t blame them.
I am realizing the possibility of great irony as I write this�.because if I am feeling myself alienated from this crowd, quite possibly millions of others are too�. We baby boomers seem never to find ourselves unaccompanied by peers on our journeys through life. Somebody has probably already written a book about it. There is probably a web site and a twelve-step group. Maybe even a piece of jewelry.
Heavy. I think I�d better just go and listen to �Stairway to Heaven� for a while.
(Just kidding.)
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