Baby Boomers, gotta give 'um credit for hanging in there, through good times and dark times, since there is no choice in the matter, still, credit is due. Time is mostly being kind to aging Baby Boomers who are still active, some working some retired and some still not sure what they want to be when they grow up.
You know you are talking to a Baby Boomer when they start getting sentimental about pay phones, typewriters, encyclopedias, drive-in movies, innocent mischief, fun and games, playing for hours outside and favorite television variety shows like Jack Benny, Ed Sullivan on Sunday nights and Red Skelton. Music was and still is on the forefront and in the background. Music was and is a character in our lives. We could easily recall what we were doing and where we were based on top 40 popular hits being aired on the radio at a given time. The Beatles and Elvis, Jimmy Hendrix and Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Journey, The Dobbie Brothers, Michael Jackson & The Jackson Five jumped out of the boom box and jazzy hipsters like Ray Charles, Tony Benet and Quincy Jones, always seemed to be there.
Ideology and believing in the possibility of world peace was an important part of life and not just an illusion, although many soldiers who went to Vietnam would disagree. The man on the moon seemed about right and righteous and gave Americans something to be proud of and hopeful about. Politics appeared to be a bit more on the up and up and peoples votes counted. Government has always been a strange and curious animal with extra limbs and sharp teeth, a funny and furious freakish-looking creature, desperate for it's survival as the fittest, wealthiest most powerful predator in control of it's own territory.
To be a Baby Boomer or not to be, is out of the question since that is what those of us born during the era we came along in, are referred to. The establishment now is youthful a new livelier funky version of the generation that preceded us. Let us strut with confidence break rules bend the sh!t out of the norm and continue the struggle for equality and justice, peace and love. Let us grow older armed with spunky, youthful attitudes as we sometimes hobble along a bit more than we used to but not as much as the people we thought were so old and still around blessing us with their own brand of tried true and tested wisdom.
