YOUNG PEOPLE NEED BETTER NARRATIVE FROM ELDERS?

Young people want to hear from the olds?

They need a better narrative from us? Us boomers?

Sure they do, just like you did when you were young.

We heard something, but what it was ain’t exactly clear.

Try and recall what it was like being a kid.

It helps having a two year old around for context.

Remember setting up chairs at the dining room table just far enough apart to step or crawl from one to the next.

In the age of exploration, which is around two, this is a big step for baby-kind.

Their new world happens every time they turn around. In an amazing world, it’s fun to share the amazement.

Then everyone grows up and start focusing on the other stuff, the life stuff, the hard stuff.

And we get older, see life unfolding, and call it good.

Isn’t that enough?

Apparently Boomers Are Still Failing?

The first time I suspected my friends of getting married, I found new friends.

Marriage? Nah.

Then I married a woman and felt foolish for ever thinking I’d never get married.

I know I married the right wife when she says, “Would you be happier if you still lived in your tiny studio apartment where we met?”

My answer: “Would you be happier if I still lived in my old place instead of marrying you? Because I think you’d have a few ex-husbands by now.”

That’s our love talk, at least on my part.

The women I’ve known that could have married me, but didn’t, have had lots of husbands.

Besides, I met some of my wife’s old boyfriends. They weren’t built for the long haul.

2

“My friends are having babies?”

We got married in 1986, our first baby arriving in 1987 via home birth.

One thing I know for certain, my kid didn’t get switched at the hospital before coming home.

We met other parents, did baby play dates, and enjoyed the heck out of being first time parents in our early thirties with one, then two babies.

Now my babies are in their early thirties.

Was it like a blink in the adulthood-compressed culture?

I’ve never heard this cultural reference before, but time races by.

3

“My friends are getting divorces and cancer diagnoses?”

If you want to do a good job with people in their twenties, skip this part.

Life is exciting for them. It’s still exciting for you too if you look for it.

Nothing says, “I’ve got nothing left to say,” then rolling out the gloom and doom down the road.

Let the people in their 20’s, those who feel freshness in the mundane, who look forward to each day with enthusiasm, let them make their own discoveries.

3-a

Cancer took up in my neck, and I can’t tell you the number of people who asked about it, then told me their sore throat story.

Or they told me about their neighbor’s uncle’s friend who knew someone who had the same thing.

Eventually I stopped talking about it and wrote it out instead.

Just yesterday I ran into a woman I knew from the gym. She was wearing a knee brace after her dog zoomed her and dropped her on a walk.

She was visiting a neighbor lady when I saw her and asked what she did to herself.

“I’ll bet it’s amazing to see everyone walking around like you did before you got hurt, and like you will when you heal up. And they have no idea of the miracle of movement.”

I knew the neighbor lady had had her hip replaced.

The knee lady said, “Oh, she knows. Believe me, she knows.”

Did I tell her I was in the club since I’d had a hip replaced and felt crippled for weeks?

No, I didn’t. I could have, but I didn’t. The neighbor lady had been encouraging about my hip, but she didn’t say anything either.

Why? Because it’s important for others to make hards discoveries on their own. By adding my own experience I would have taken away from hers.

By the way, they weren’t young people, okay Boomer? Probably younger than me, not that it matters.

Young People Speaking Their Minds

Complaints by some bearded white man rings hollow.

Grow up, fucker. You’ve been listening to the wrong aggrieved white men far too long.

In addition, stop decorating your mom’s basement like a dorm room for cultural relevance.

Society is moving away from slow learners. And if your wife, if you have a wife, agrees with your taste in decor, she needs to read more.

Or? Is it a baby boomer responsibility to get them up to speed? Let’s give it a try.

For starters, this is the man who started the famous rock band WINGS.

Hint: it’s Bruce Springsteen.

These are The Beatles. Get in loser, we’re going painting.

I knew a young couple who got married on a budget.

This was their budget:

That’s what 1986 did on a rainy May day. In morning coats. With a bride shining like a National guitar.

Take a look at the top picture again.

See the two tiny people near Haystack Rock on Cannon Beach?

That’s 1986.

It’s what 2058 will look like from 2022. (I did the math. Lol)

This is why young people follow BoomerPDX. They need a blogger who keeps blogging, and takes blog topic submissions in comments.

Whaddaya got?