Posted on 02/27/2011 3:03:31 AM PST by Scanian
Baby Boomers are having a hard time. Not just with the economy, or the health issues that crop up in your 50s and 60s, or even getting caught between taking care of our aging parents and unemployed kids.
No, I’m talking about the fact that many Boomers, of which I am one, do not want to grow up.
Those of us born in the Baby Boomer period, between 1946 and 1964, range in age from 47 to 65. We are either on the young side of old, or we’re just a hop, skip and hopefully not a fall into 70.
I don’t know that we mind growing up, but many of us don’t want to grow old. But certain Boomer minds have somehow merged the two. In order not to grow old, they have taken the position that they will simply not grow up.
You see it in the absurd notion put forward by journalists and advertisers — “50 is the new 30.” “60 is the new 40.” We buck each other up by dressing and behaving like it’s true, as though if we repeat it enough we will actually make it so.
And because we are Boomers and have been at the forefront of so many innovations, from rock ’n’ roll to the computer, some have this misguided impulse to act hip. Have you ever seen so many 50-year-olds dressed like teenagers? In my grandfather’s and even my father’s era, grown men did not wear sneakers, shorts, T-shirts and caps unless they were actually involved in an athletic activity. Grown men did not go to work looking like they were headed for sleep-away camp.
My grandfather dressed in slacks and a shirt and sensible shoes and a suit every day for work.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Those born in 1946 were 23 years old and many of them out of college 2-3 years by ’69. How many of those who were 15 when Kennedy made his speech in ‘61 do you think were inspired to make that happen and studied to work on just that? I know there were two of my cousins who did.
“The baby boomers brought us to the moon and back...”
That’s major league bullsh*t!...NASA was created in 1958 when the first baby boomers were 12 years old.
I am truly embarrassed for you.
And it was when that they first put a man on the moon and brought him back? Read my post 121 if you haven’t already.
You don't need to be embarrassed for me. I was there.
Baby Boomers had extremely minimal representation and their presence did not dominate at the time of Gemini/Apollo 11. They couldn’t have done much but wet and crap their pants at the onset and heyday of the Jet Age’s first and second generations, which never would have happened the way it did if it were not for the “Greatest Generation” and the people who worked at home, fought overseas and brought us victory in WWII.
We (the entire free world or what’s left (right) of it) owe them an incalculable debt of gratitude while the Baby Boomers seem to be in a hurry to take credit or to have it bestowed upon them for things that were bound to happen anyway. Baby Boomers seem to want what they want and they want it “NOW” or even yesterday...
I think Baby Boomers can take credit for being the world’s greatest ever consumers of material goods (Yuppies), all of which would not have been possible without their predecessors having acheived victory in WWII.
Any of you patriotic Vietnam war and Desert Storm veterans reading this get a pass since I’m older now and wise enough (or at least not as unwise) to recognize that all Baby Boomers are NOT the same!
I was born in early ‘59 just 48 hours before you guys lost Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper. I barely remember seeing The Beatles on Ed Sullivan (first appearance)...I can appreciate just how different my life has been in comparison to a lot of Boomers who were born by the first Tuesday in November of 1954.
Before then, you were not a legal adult nor did you have the right to vote until you reached the age of 21 but President Nixon changed all of that and with Operation Linebacker II in late 1972, helped bring the North Vietnamese to the table again and as a direct result of the Christmas bombings of Hanoi, the surviving POW’s being held at the Hanoi Hilton were subsequently realeased but not beore the last man to walk on the moon had returned to Earth at least three months earlier.
Well, that isn't quite how it happened. Viagara - sildenafil - was actually a blood pressure medicine in Phase III testing. The males in the test volunteers began to report a, ah, interesting side-effect. It was pure serendipity but pure gold for Pfizer. Anyway, the profit from this sort of thing funds the research into other drugs, some of which wouldn't ever be developed because there isn't enough market to support the development costs. These things do tend to work out.
Totally off-topic: Dude, I am glad I waded through this whole thread just for your tag line.
So what's that make you - like 18?
And here I had assumed that I was reading the posts of an adult all this time. I guess you can be anyone on the internet.
Exactly! This is how i’ve felt all along. I grew up and formed my views during the Reagan years. I wasn’t some Woodstock hippie. I’m 48 this year.
And I’ve always felt as if I’m the bridge in the family. I was the first to go to college in my family, although it was a state school. I worked my way through, married young, and we’ve worked, saved, and raised 3 kids. My daughter now, a Gn X’er or whatever you call it, went to an upper league school and is employed at a very prestigous financial firm. I’ll never do as well as her ...but I did better than my own parents.
As a nurse, the age I really dread taking care of is the late 50’s to mid-60’s aged patients. They really seem to have rode themselves very hard with alcohol, drugs, hard living, or what have you. A lot of the women are in sad shape ..lots of them divorced, big time health problems, etc. Again just observations ...maybe just generalizations — but it’s what I see.
Geesh...you know nothing about you years of boomers or generation x or anything else regarding this. My parents are 65 and I am 41. I pray that you won’t make the same errors again because it makes you look so dumb and I know you aren’t.
Well, you're the one who said, "my parents are barely boomers" without defining which end of the boomer years they were born in. I'm supposed to read your mind, or am I not allowed to form my own take on what you say, based on your exact words?
I pray that you won’t make the same errors again because it makes you look so dumb...
Heaven forbid!
So, you're 41, eh? Could'a fooled me. Given your earlier post, I would have thought you were little more than a teenager. You sure you didn't transpose the digits in your age? I don't know.....I'm not believin' you somehow.
C'mon sport. What's your favorite video game? What tv shows do you watch? You liking anybody at school? What's her name?
First of all we have had many discussions over the years so the insults (me included) are unnecessary. So you don’t like my post about the destruction of the boomer generation and instead of disputing it with facts, you insult. And I am the supposed 14 year old? Really?????
Naps, I've seen you posting on the forum for a long time, and I've probably spoken to you here and there, but there are far too many members of this forum for me to get to know each person I speak to in casual conversation.
From what I can recall of your postings, you normally come off like a rational, mature, conservative, but tonight, your posts read as though some adolescent has hijacked your account.
Seriously - go back and carefully read the posts you wrote (if this is really Naps I'm speaking to).
So you don’t like my post about the destruction of the boomer generation and instead of disputing it with facts, you insult.
I found your initial post to be pompous and insulting to an entire generation of Americans, me included. You even admitted to applying a "blanket" standard to the boomer generation in your later posts to others.
In addition to that, other posters have pointed out that it was the Greatest Generation who allowed FDR to implement the beginnings of Socialism in this country. I might add, that one of his successors, LBJ, was responsible for putting a turbo-charger on FDR's Socialist gov't model. As long as you want facts here, I might point out that hardly any of those in the Boomer generation were even old enough to vote at that time.
So, what generation is really MOST responsible for the mess we're in today? Which generation was MOST responsible for setting us on the path of decline?
Let's do this right.... What year were most Boomers first able to vote? That would be 1968. Who won the election that year - the Democrat, or the Republican? Well, it was the Republican. Do you really think that that first crop of Boomer voters cast their ballots for Tricky Dick? Or, was it their parents?
So - just when were the Boomers first able to sway a presidential election with their numbers? Was it in 1976, the year that Jimmy Carter was elected? I doubt it. The oldest Boomers were only about 20 years of age at that time, so their numbers were still the smaller portion of the electorate.
So - what generation was responsible for electing Jimmy Carter? You see where this is going? Keep tracking this out logically, and by the numbers, and you'll see that the Boomer generation didn't really have an impact on presidential elections until Ronald Reagan's time (and after).
Did the Boomers (gasp!) elect Ronaldus Magnus? I don't know. Why don't you take it from here?
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