Hey, Boomer
That’s me. Born in 1950, an unexpected sixth child to parents already in their forties who thought they were done. I grew up on a farm six miles from where I live now. We called the midday meal dinner and the evening one supper. We went to town on Friday nights, when the stores were open till nine, after the milking was done. We grew up with politics being discussed, religion being practiced—or not; it was up to you. You’d get your mouth washed out with soap if you let certain words leave it. You didn’t wear hats in church if you were a guy, you stood for the anthem and sang along because you knew all the words. We said the pledge in the morning at school and we prayed before lunch.
It was a good, safe, protected growing-up. It made me able to enjoy the outrageous pleasure of the 1960s with no fear of being ravaged by the generation before us. Not that we weren’t, but we didn’t fear it. We rolled our eyes and went on, collecting memories and traditions as we went.
But, guess what? That was me, along with others who shared my kind of experience. That’s not the way it was for everybody. Not even close. I was a poor kid who went to a small school, who had some of the misery that went along with that, but no one—especially the teachers I had—ever told me I couldn’t do anything because of it.
I learned young, then, not to generalize people. I learned young not to say these kids nowadays because these kids were and are nowhere near all being alike.
I just now realized that generalize and generation likely have the same roots in etymology. I’m not going to look it up—I’m proud enough that I spelled etymology right without checking first. If I’m right, though, that’s the reason I’m writing this. And, no, I never know starting out what I’m going to say. I should probably try that sometime.
Generalizing an entire generation of people does no one any good. Thinking all boomers are the same is as destructive as starting sentences with the words “in my day …”
We are like watching a marching band on a football field. They are loud, aren’t they? They wear the same clothes, step in time and in unison, and yet we can spot our own kid when we are at the top of the bleachers and she’s the one playing the oboe. She’s the short one who’s behind the six-and-a-half-footer who plays center on the basketball team, so no one can see the oboist except the ones who look for her. The ones whose lives start and stop with her existence.
Some band parents don’t bother going to performances. They don’t make sure their kid gets something to eat before the game. They think band is a waste of time and money. On the other hand, some think the band was created for their golden child and the other players are just incidental. They think the band director doesn’t know what s/he’s doing and that their kid should have gotten a scholarship at the private school.
Some band members are devoted to their art, some to the poetic routine of it, some to being a part of something that fits. Some play in the band because they don’t want to go home after school.
They’re not all anything—they are all themselves.
While I don’t believe either boomers and/or Christians (yeah, I’m both) are actively discriminated against, neither do I think they’re not generalized right into the ground. Just as a certain bunch of people believe all Muslims were the cause of 9/11 and another certain bunch believe the Civil War wasn’t fought over slavery. An entire batch batch think women shouldn’t vote, and another particularly nasty clump cherrypicks the Bible until only rich white guys are left standing. (Guaranteed there are no rich white guys in the Bible. Just sayin’.)
But it’s not all of any demographic. To act as if it is disrespects and insults us all. I kind of hope the next time you say Hey, boomer with a sneer in your voice, you’ll remember that although many boomers voted for the present political regime and its attacks on democracy, many of us did not. Although many of us are are christian nationalists and overt racists, many of us are not.
One of the most glorious boomers of all, Dolly Parton, left us this recently. Those of us born on the early side of our generation are used to loss, because we’ve aged into it. We are old enough that family members, friends, and peers are dying and we spend an unbelievable time grieving. That grief also extends to people we admire, who made the world a better place, whose legacy will live on despite the travesties committed around it.
This doesn’t make us all heroes, doesn’t mean we’re running around feeling victorious because we don’t have regrets—we wish!—and it doesn’t mean we don’t get how much our very presence irritates many members of the Gen X, Millenniels, Gen Z, and the Gen Alpha.
But I’m fairly certain we are no heavier albatrosses on your backs than our parents were on ours. While they were called both the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation and are much revered by history for what they did right, they also did wrong. They left messes behind. They made mistakes.
As have we.
As will you.
After all this complaining, I really don’t have a bangup finish. I just want to remind you (and other Boomers who talk about kids today) that we’re in this together. The petite oboist is every bit as important as the white guy. The Baby Boomer who takes too long checking out at the grocery store matters as much as you do. But the oboist doesn’t matter more, nor does the Boomer. We’re just cogs in a chain that’s losing its strength to purposeful divisiveness.
Don’t let it happen. Have a good week. Be nice to somebody.
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