I know that demographically, you’re lumped in with the boomers, but I’ve never seen anybody born after about 1958 or so as being a “real” boomer. You don’t remember the Kennedy murder, weren’t anywhere near “the summer of love” or Woodstock or anything like that and your coming-of-age years were in the late 70s and early 80s. Quite a different profile from the standard image of the boomer.
I agree. I was born in ‘61. I think there should be a ‘58-’64 (or perhaps ‘68) middle generation in there somewhere!
Your answer made me think that we should have a “Boomer” purity test,with questions like “Who is Buffy St. Marie”,fill in the next line after “gliddy gloop gloopy” and did you ever experience Hendrix or Janis in concert?
On a more serious note,I want to point out to our younger critics,that many,many of us who fit the classic Boomer profile,as it’s been described so aptly,were teenagers below voting age when Johnson instituted his Great Society ; many Boomers who hadn’t yet reached the age of majority (which was 21 at the the time) were drafted to fight in Southeast Asia even though legally those soldiers weren’t old enough to vote or even buy a beer.
The Sixties were a period of extreme turmoil,there were terrible riots,students were shot at Kent State,there was the war,there was heavy propaganda against it,plus, we, as still very young people, were also having to deal with the utter trauma of our president being assassinated, in addition to being exhorted to experiment with drugs,sex and to tune in,turn on and drop out. It was so different from the fifties that it was like going to sleep one night and waking up in a different world.
In my opinion we were very vulnerable and our youthful idealism and natural inclination towards independence from our parents at that age was used to manipulate us.
Having said all this,I also want to say that I don’t at all blame my parent’s generation,they went to the world wars,the Korean war,some of them old enough to remember keenly the deprivation of the great depression and they were and are a very patriotic and self sufficient group. I think they had such faith and trust in our country’s leadership and in the American spirit that they didn’t forsee the difficulties we are facing now or that we faced when my generation was growing up.