July 16, 2005
Warning to Baby Boomers!
Dave Barry, famed humorist, calls it like it is:
“Yes. Say it out loud, Boomers. We are middle-aged. The time has come for us to stop identifying with Wally and the Beav; we are now a lot closer to Ward and June.
Somebody has to be the grown-ups, and now it’s our turn.”
Maybe, we don’t want our turn, Dave.
The universe is making us take it anyway.
I asked my friends how they were handling this revelation that we are not young anymore, and their answers did not surprise me.
An old college friend, Eleanor (Ellie) told me exactly how she is handling aging.
Ellie says she named herself “Auntie” 10 years ago when she was 48 and her first grandchild was born. Since then there have been two more new arrivals, and each time, Ellie’s daughter asks her when they can start calling her Grandma.
Ellie’s stock answer is that she will allow that when she has grey hair and a quad cane.
Ellie started coloring her hair last year, so it’s going to be awhile before anyone knows she has reached one of her own criteria!
When Ellie turned 50, she decided to knock 10 years off her age.
Anything she would have to fill out (except for medical and legal forms) now has a birth date 10 years later than actuality. And, she makes sure that if the subject of anyone’s age comes up that those involved in the conversation think she’s 10 years younger.
Even her high school and college graduation dates have changed!
No one has ever questioned her.
It’s not as though she looks 10 years younger; it’s just that she says it and writes it, so matter of factly, that people just take it as a given.
If she ever gets caught, she says she’ll claim it’s a typo!
Another friend, Linda, remembers the exact moment she realized the truth-- she is a Baby Boomer through and through and growing older by the day.
Linda was at the Barnes and Noble when she encountered a crowd of teens.
Many of them had green, red, or blue hair and wore black clothing.
Most had lots of piercings on all visible body parts.
Linda was neatly dressed in a matching checkered capris outfit with a yellow tank top, had no piercings anywhere, and no brightly colored hair.
She saw another group of kids with low, low, low, loose pants. One girl had baggy, black balloon-type pants with an elastic band so that they could droop enough to effectively show her bright pink underwear.
One teen boy yelled, “Baby come back,” as the pink underwear girl tried to pull her pants up and run off.
The boy dropped his pants all the way to the ground showing a “thank you Jesus” message on his underwear.
As Linda entered the bookstore, pants up and fastened securely around her waist, she spoke to a couple who had witnessed the entire spectacle.
Their pants were up, too.
Linda said, “I think my sensibilities have just been violated, and I think I must be old.”
They knew exactly what she meant.
A few more revelations from my friends:
Steve says a big plus of aging is that when you buy appliances now, they probably won’t wear out before you do.
Janet tells me that one of the joys of aging is that absolutely no one expects you to run anywhere. What a relief!
Personally, I enjoy listening to stories about other people’s vacations, hearing about their operations, looking at pictures of their grandchildren, eating an early dinner, and singing to elevator music—all irrefutable signs of aging.
Dave Barry sums this all up nicely for us by explaining the biggest myth of aging:
“As you grow older, you gradually lose your interest in sex. This myth probably got started because younger people seem to want to have sex with each other at every available opportunity including traffic lights, whereas older people are more likely to reserve their sexual activities for special occasions, such as the installation of a new pope!”
Wish I had said that.
