BABY BOOMER ADVICE, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

Baby boomer advice comes in all shapes and sizes, every color of the rainbow, for better and worse.

You get it without asking, without needing it, but you still get it.

Ever wonder why? Here’s why:

In a proper timeline, numbers go from ‘0’ to infinity. (And beyond.)

Boomers haven’t aged on that timeline. Who to blame?

You’ve heard of ‘late in life’ pregnancies?

 

The oldest woman to give birth is Erramatti Mangamma India. She delivered twin girls at the age of 74 in 2019 through in vitro fertilization (IVF

 

Imagine being born in 1950 to a fifty year old woman, a sixty year old woman.

She’d be older than automobiles and airplanes.

At high school graduation she’d be as old, even older, than the grandparents.

A kid born in 1950 grows up hearing talk about the Great War, the Great Depression, The Big War, and the rest of the life-forming events of the Greatest Generation.

A grandpa could be a Civil War veteran if he joined up in 1864 as a fifteen year old.

Eventually the 1950 kid goes one of two ways: old before their time, or forever young.

If you hear a boomer sounding like they’re from another century and think 1900’s, keep going.

When I think of the commune-living, organic-farming, free-roaming hippies, I think of the western frontier of the pioneer days.

Luckily, Oregon has many communities that look like a pioneer town. (Hey, Sisters.)

 

Sisters City Council made the 1880’s style storefront a part of its zoning ordinance in the early 1970s.

 

It’s a pleasant facade, and a good example of baby boomer advice, a sometimes not so pleasant facade.

 

Talking to my dad recently, he was going on about “participation trophies.” When I pointed out that we wouldn’t have received said participation trophies had his generation not invented them, his response was:

“Yep, that’s another problem with your generation. Always blaming your faults on other people.”

 

Baby Boomer Advice Will Stone You On A Rainy Day? It Might

Well, they’ll stone ya when you’re trying to be so good
They’ll stone ya just a-like they said they would
They’ll stone ya when you’re tryin’ to go home
Then they’ll stone ya when you’re there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

 

Bob Dylan knew. Somehow, he knew.

You could be minding your own business, doing nothing to bother anyone, or anything, and here it comes, more damn advice.

“Maybe you should spend more time at home.”

That’s poor advice for a shut-in, but there it is.

 

Well, they’ll stone ya when you’re walkin’ ’long the street
They’ll stone ya when you’re tryin’ to keep your seat
They’ll stone ya when you’re walkin’ on the floor
They’ll stone ya when you’re walkin’ to the door

 

Substitute ‘stone ya’ for boomer advice to look out for the bad things.

It comes from any and everywhere.

But you should not feel so all alone, and you know why.

 

They’ll stone ya when you’re at the breakfast table
They’ll stone ya when you are young and able
They’ll stone ya when you’re tryin’ to make a buck
They’ll stone ya and then they’ll say, “good luck”

 

Forever Young Boomer

Forever young is a condition that usually sets in a few month after a health scare, a warning to ‘change your ways young man.’

Or turning forty.

It used to be called a mid-life crisis until I passed through mid-life and the only crisis I had was waiting for one to happen.

Not everyone rides around in a schlong-mobile, a lifted truck with brass balls hanging off the trailer hitch, or a vintage hard-tail Harley.

But you’ve got to respect their game when they do.

I drove the same soccer-mom van as the rest of the dad’s who give a damn, the same station wagon as everyone else tasked with loading everyone and everything to go some place new, some place different.

One time everyone was loaded up, along with one of my wife’s friends, and heading north over the 205 bridge.

 I got a flat tire, the kind where you have to unload everything in the back of a station wagon to get the spare.

Wife’s friend decided to walk me through the process step by step while chain smoking cigarettes.

A few things I noticed: it’s scary as hell changing a tire on the traffic side of a car on a freeway bridge, but even scarier changing one on the opposite side where a three foot barrier is the difference between dry land and the Columbia River.

The longer it took the older I got, until I felt ready for the nursing home.

I asked my wife to ask her friend to get back in the car because I didn’t trust myself to say it nicely.

 

Well, they’ll stone you and say that it’s the end
Then they’ll stone you and then they’ll come back again
They’ll stone you when you’re riding in your car
They’ll stone you when you’re playing your guitar

 

Young people with an old soul are nice unless they work it too hard, like quoting Bob Dylan.

Old people with a young soul?

Same thing, but instead of quoting Dylan, they’ve lived it.

Well, they’ll stone you when you walk all alone
They’ll stone you when you are walking home
They’ll stone you and then say you are brave
They’ll stone you when you are set down in your grave
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

 

No participation medals from Bob, just the truth in a three minute record with a 4/4 beat.