BOOMER STREET

Baby boomer gets the message. We’ve heard the message all of our lives. It goes like this:

Move over little dog, the big old dog is moving in.

We were once the little dog and moved over for those who knew better. We did what we were told. The idea is we don’t have to like it, but we do need to comply, which we’ve done.

Now what? We’re the ones telling others to move it on over. How’s it going so far? If it feels like something’s not quite right, that some of us have skipped a few spaces in the game of life to move ahead, keep reading.

Some folks get old and get soft. They are more willing to live and let live because they just don’t feel like keeping up the fight. It’s not the same as giving up, but it looks like giving up.

When your life feels like you’re eating the wrong food, drinking the wrong fluids, and you don’t live in Flint, Michigan, you’ve got a you-problem. Instead of taking blame for action, or inaction, it’s easier to assign blame to other.

This where millennials come in handy. Blame them for everything. Baby boomer has the right experience to hand out blame. We were blamed for rocking the boat in the Sixties and Seventies, then settle the hell down to what passes as normal life of partners and kids and housing and cars.

We turned into our parents the same way millennials fear they might turn into us. And they will.

It turns out the road of life goes all over the place for younger people, but not so much as they age. The American road map for Boomer looks like the same map our parents and grandparents followed: chronic disease, drug dependency, illness of the week.

If it’s not a knee it’s a hip, or a shoulder, or a neck, heart, kidney, liver. They all show up at a health role call. For all the talk about living life to the fullest, old people like boomers might have waited too long. What to do?

Like the evolutionary creatures we are, the word is adapt. If you can’t do what you’d like to do, adapt. Skydiving? Whitewater rafting? Mountain climbing? Go if you can; wait for pictures from your kids if you can’t.

In the meantime look around and model the sort of behavior you’d like to see in others. Take a walk on Boomer Road. The hard part is adapting our attitude to include new ideas from the youth, many who aren’t as young as they used to be.

We’re all on the same road, so make room.