BOOMER BUBBLE: LIVING IN A PORCUPINE SUIT

Once you make it to the ‘home’ things change; you’re out of the boomer bubble and into the back stretch of life.

Everyone can justify being nice since you’re on the clock.

Or when you move to the ‘over 55’ community? Same deal, things change, but you’re still not out of the boomer bubble.

No one except your Fox News addicted neighbors will quiz you about current events in China, then no matter how you answer they blame Obama, then add the horror of Hillary’s 33K emails. But like Ellen and Mr. Bush in Dallas, be kind.

(Note to Hillary and Staff: I’ve got a shitload of emails backed up that I call ‘reference’ and ‘archival’ when instead they occupy the fear that if I delete them I’ll forget the information in them.

However, if you delete them I’ll have someone to blame, even though I haven’t looked at any of them since the moment I didn’t delete them when I should have.)

But, I digress. What is a boomer bubble, you ask? You know you did.

Boomer Bubble Explained

This is an example of parents we all met with kids going through school: the bored parent, the absent parent, the helicopter parent, the over achieving parent with under achieving kids, the over achieving kids with under achieving parents.

If you can think of more, leave the list in comments.

So, you get the idea, every parent, every combination of parent, is different, just like the kids.

Whoever and whichever parent you knew, or were, let’s say you did your best with what you had to work with. Fair enough?

At some pivotal point the role you’d figured out changes. You’re not the mom, the dad, the daughter, the son, you thought you were. Time does that.

If you, or someone close to you, in the sense you find yourself listening to them more often than you listen to others, turns the corner, does a one eighty leaving you to wonder what happened, don’t panic.

If they’re not in jail, in the gutter, or headed that way, but have changed, that’s a good thing. Just remember,

A BOOMER BUBBLE ISN’T YOUR FAULT

If a kid disagrees, challenges, or explains things like you’re a second grader, they do it because they think you live in a boomer bubble.

And you do, so shut up. Start defending the boomer generation and you risk popping the bubble. And no one wants that.

I mean, here we are, older and active, except for the idiots who played high school and college sports and can’t walk or lift their arms over their heads. Besides them, baby boomers display a healthy demographic.

Oh, and the group of guys sent to Vietnam, who went from the sidewalks and dirt roads and small towns of America to Basic and AIT and hopped off in Saigon? They and their representatives are still working out the final costs and treatments for injuries they suffered while they’ve been dying off for decades.

How long’s it been?

Living in a boomer bubble that graduated from high school in 1973 means remembering the names but not the faces of classmates’ brothers who died there, of older kids in the neighborhood who died there.

Did someone from the class of 1973 die there? I don’t know, but I joined in 1974, six months before the war ended, and now it’s called the Vietnam Era.

Echoes of those days come up more often with forever wars in Afghanistan and a change in Syria the Trump people hope won’t make too much news.

When the challenge comes, when you have to decide if you live in a boomer bubble, or the real world, why not reflect back first. Why not pause and consider time spent with your parents and grandparents.

Here, I’ll help: Baby boomers’ parents were likely children during the Great Depression, the one with skinny families living in shacks during dust storms. You’ve seen those pictures?

It’s a different picture than the Financial Crisis of 2008.

Their parents were likely in WWII or WWII when America was in Korea, France was in Vietnam, and England was in Malaysia. Saving the world from evil leaves a scar for generations and boomers were the first to find out.

It should be no huge surprise that baby boomers created the largest generational demographic in what are called millennials.

And there’s no additional shock value to learn that these damn millennials want answers, like why we live in a baby boomer bubble?

Do you live in a bubble?