I am a baby boomer. A generation that defines itself by the word “baby?”
Yes, I am one of millions; self-involved and infatuated with my own history. We wore out the placard of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, and can never let go of the memories of Camelot, Watergate and Vietnam.
We will forever be on the cusp of the sociopolitical blueprint of America’s statistics. Not quite as noble and self-sacrificing as Tom Brokaw’s Great Generation and never as free and techno-savy as Generation X, we are also known as the Sandwich Generation.
We are the men and women who have had the responsibility of being the care-givers for ailing parents, teenagers and grown children. We remain the most literate of American children, who struggle with our extended mid-life crisis, fight for our identity and arrive in the end at the cusp of our own autumn years. Drat, autumn has taken on another new meaning!
Our numbers are counted into the double-digit millions from the end of World War II. On some demographic charts we begin in 1944 and on others in 1947. Regardless of where we start the count down, we will continue, even into our own old age, to ride the crest of modern American trends.
Do you remember when being thirty was over the hill? Maybe you’d best be ready to cash it in by thirty. Well, maybe not. Move the line in the sand. After all, haven’t you heard? Life does begin at forty and I thought it might be a good time to begin mine.
Then again, don’t you think it’s really sexy to be the Big Five-O and watch Lauren Hutton get prettier? You did know that fifty is the new forty?
Then suddenly there it was. In the middle of the night like a stealth bomber, it slipped quietly onto the newsstands. How can you deny it when People Magazine splashed it all over the cover!
Goldie Hawn is sixty?
I am fOIS In The City
Boomer web site.
fOISinTheCity 
I think it’s important to remember we were also the first television generation–and the first generation that was singled out as a marketing demographic by the advertising industry. TV and Madison Avenue created in us a peer group identity that was stronger than our family or regional ties.
As a kid in small-town Maine, I felt more in common with kids in suburban California than I did with my parents. I think that’s why we still feel more identity as “boomers” than we do with our own community. I have no idea if that’s good or bad. It’s just who we are.
Some of us have not aged well because we are still trying to be teenagers. A lot of the teabaggers are Boomers. They still want Mom to pay the bills, but not impose any of those pesky rules–and I will NOT share with my brother if I don’t wanna!
But some of us, luckily, are still trying for that peace & love thing. Let’s hope we can bring some of that back before we croak.
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