Baby Boomer Love

Is It Love Or Another Cramp To Stretch Out

LOVE THAT BEACH

Once you take a subject like baby boomers, and you are one, topics change faster than sunlight reflecting off wet tie-dye.

The huge range of experience between those born from 1946 to 1964 makes common ground more uncertain.

One universal feeling rises to the top.

Love.

From Bo Diddley asking Who Do You Love, to the Beatles assuring All You Need Is Love, what do boomers love today?

Let’s check in with a baby boomer love search.

• Sliding into first place for boomer love is…baseball? Nytimes.com says breakout the peanuts and crackerjacks.

No surprise here when an aging chunk of America likes watching grown men swing the hardwood and grip balls. After all, who doesn’t like swinging for the fences? Or reaching back and whipping a screwball across the plate?

If it’s been a while since your last visit to the batting cage, and later the chiropractor if you pop loose, it’s still good. Your shoulder takes a week to warm up and a year to recover from playing catch? It’s okay. Know your limits.

If the love of baseball means watching fat guys stand around scratching themselves while the crowd sits, eats hot dogs, and drinks beer, so what? Like they say in the big leagues, practice makes perfect.

• The second love for baby boomers, according to google and huffingtonpost.com, is being single and dating. And why not?

They know the ropes, they dance the dance. Maybe too good. But as long as hair paint, botox, and emotional vulnerability stays in the game, single boomers ought to have a field day.

Just be careful. They also carry hidden baggage.

A divorced man once said it took him three years to get his wife’s voice out of his head. Do you want to wonder what your dude is really hearing when you’re talking together on a date?

A single boomer woman confessed that all the good men are married, so she dates married men. The heart may want what the heart wants, but a cold one gets colder with these couples.

Know how chilly the water is before you dive into the boomer dating pool.

• Number 2.5 is a link to a cnn.com story about online dating.

“There has been a perfect storm … of baby boomers who are single, with a growing number … using the Internet and discovering that it’s a way to be connected,” said Dr. Gail Saltz.

It’s all perfect until you meet and greet and eat, since a dinner date still sets the ‘get to know me’ table.

“I was a vegetarian and one of the guys they set me up with took me to a Moroccan restaurant, and he ate raw meat in front of me, right next to me!” Forman recalled.

Picky eaters are one thing, but a guy who eats raw meat is a man SCREAMING for someone to change him. Boomers may have the power to move the world, but this sounds challenging.

Who eats raw meat next to a vegetarian woman? Should she be glad he didn’t take her to place where you choose live animals for dinner?

“Oooo, look at the cute fish tank. I’ve never seen one with only lobsters. Whaaat?”

• The final search line item is not big news, but it’s getting there with recent votes in the states of Washington and Colorado.

Baby Boomers Love the Herb.

Don’t check the drawer for oregano, bay leaf, or basil. Check the belly bag, man-purse, or backpack and don’t be surprised. Call it ganja, couch-lock, or medicine for the card-crowd, but don’t call it Iowa dirt weed.

As boomers evolve, so does the substance that once meant a date in court for a hard-drug hearing. Loading maryjane into the same box as heroin, crack, and horse tranquilizer still happens, but the tide is turning. It’s just slow. Same-sex marriage is legal in more states than the chronic, with Washington supporting both.

Keep in step with what you love, and who you love, and encourage others to do the same.

It’s a Portland baby boomer mission. Make it yours, too.