BOOMER VISION IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR CLEARS THE FIELD

Boomer vision is what we call it when things go right.

“Yep, I saw that coming from the start.”

But let’s call it what it is instead: experience.

Even if we’re surprised by certain outcomes, we still call it boomer vision.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had a line from screenwriter William Goldman:

“I see things as they are while the rest of the world wears bi-focals.”

Here’s an update: tri-focals. We see the world better with a certain tip of the head to clear things up.

And that passes as experience after enough years of looking and learning and seeing things that make us ask, “What’s wrong?”

That’s the big question, what’s wrong.

My first time to England I heard this refrain, or a variation, over and over: “You okay? Are you alright?”

It was a greeting instead of, “Hello, how are you?”

Maybe a nice ‘hello’ is the same as, ‘Are you okay’, but one sounds like a courtesy while the other sounds like you need to take a personal inventory before answering.

The first time I heard it, I thought, ‘Why wouldn’t I be okay? Am I okay?’

Then I got used to it. I even say it on occasion.

Are You Okay?

Sounds sort of stupid to ask, I know. Are you okay during a freaking covid pandemic?

A lady down the street is okay. In fact, she’s doing better than anyone I know.

She travels, has social gatherings, and poo poos mask wearing while she waits on the green light of herd immunity. Should I tell her she’s in the danger zone of coronavirus infection with the habits she continues?

No, no I shouldn’t. She knows better than I do how to live her life. But it feels like it’s going to be a shorter life if she doesn’t change her ways.

Go ahead an call me a fear monger, but after going through the rigors of chemo and radiation for neck cancer, I’d rather not see others suffer needlessly.

But that might be stepping too far into the unknown? I’ve got the experience. My eye witness during cancer treatment said he’d never seen anyone suffer as much as I was.

I said, “Come on, your mother in law lived with you at the end of her life. Wasn’t there a little suffering going on?”

He amended his observation to, “I’ve never seen anyone suffer like you are without dying.”

I hope I wasn’t a big disappointment on that count. By the way, if you visit any patient in dire straits, don’t say that shit. It’s not helpful.

Boomer Vision From Senior Living

If seniorliving.org takes aim on a generation, you know the jigs up. We’re old, and no amount of hair dye, man-tan, or botox changes the numbers.

What numbers, you ask?

. . . babies in the U.S. were born at a rate of about 2.5 million a year. Then in 1946, this rate exploded to 3.4 million and maintained this pace for the next few decades. The peak years were 1957 and 1961 with 4.3 million births a year. In all, these years produced about 76 million Baby Boomers.

Those are the numbers, and they’re huge, until the millennials took the title of biggest generational cohort.

Big surprise that the biggest generation begat an even bigger one? And no, all of that conceiving didn’t happen in the mud at Woodstock.

Lessons Of Poor Judgement

After all of the free love, whatever that was; after well-heeled boomer kids joined the masses of cheap living and endured enough to know that they wanted a bigger piece of pie, things changed.

Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll transitioned to marriage, jobs, and 401Ks. Fighting ‘the Man’ at the ramparts turned into ‘Listening to the Man’ for financial advice.

In other words, the fire eaters grew up and cut their hair, or lost it, and now we get the nostalgic takes of the time in movies like ‘Almost Famous’, and the more current ‘The Trial fo the Chicago Seven.’

Here’s The Weird Thing About Boomer Vision

After the war deaths from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the less noticed deaths associated with military training for war fighters, we can’t as a nation get a grip on COVID19.

We can’t all agree to wear a mask, wash our hands, and keep socially distant to the point of over a quarter million deaths in the afflicted.

No one is getting drafted and learning how to low-crawl under barbed wire while a thumping machine gun fires rounds over their heads for added realism.

No one is getting off a bus in Receiving, taken to a stinky warehouse, and fitted with an old field jacket with bullet holes and blood stains that wouldn’t come out in the wash.

We’re not asked to put three rounds inside the diameter of a quarter on the rifle range. All we’re asked to do is so simple, but not so simple for ‘Don’t tell me what to do’ guy.

How much experience will it take before boomer vision kicks in and we all do the right thing, instead of ‘I don’t see why my freedom should be affected by your health problems.’

I’ll interpret that message for you, my readers. It’s a solid FUCK YOU to directions on curbing the covid spread. It’s the same solid message we’ve heard from boomers at the highest levels of American leadership.

It started in 1998.

“The question for the baby boomers now that they have reached political maturity is simple. Will they use their political power to make Social Security and Medicare sustainable for the long-term?” said Concord Coalition Executive Director Martha Phillips. “Entitlement reform is not about today’s seniors-it is about the type of nation the boomers will leave to future generations of Americans.”

Phillips also urged the new baby boomer majority in the House to work with the first baby boomer President in history to deal in a bipartisan fashion with the long-term fiscal problems facing Social Security and Medicare.

“Up until now, Congress has avoided making tough decisions about Social Security and Medicare,” said Phillips. “The boomers now in power must recognize the need to reform these programs to ensure they will be secure for their fellow boomers, their children, and their grandchildren.”

No one should tell their kids and grandkids “fuck you.”

At our age, they might decide we need some ass-kicking. Maybe we deserve it? Do we? Do you?

Leave a comment. Since this post will reach over half the states in America, and twenty five nations on average, your comments will be read, so make them useful.

If you’re not a boomer, and you don’t have vision, find a boomer and ask them about their vision.

If they sound like A-holes with their answer, find another one and ask about boomer vision.