LIFE AND DEATH IN BOOMER PORTLAND

Reposted from 2013:

Let’s face it, if you’re a baby boomer your life is over. Done.

The problem is no one told you, but you’ve heard things.

Younger smart-alecks say you’re sticking around for the big jobs and big money they deserve before bankrupting America with your anticipated retirement and health needs?

“Life expectancy is too long to sustain current payouts.”

If that doesn’t say tuck in and zip the body bag and just die, what does?

“Boomers reinvent themselves over and over and hog all the benefits aimed for the rest of us.”

Reinvent may be a stretch after a rough start.

From the other side of the generation gap, older people never liked boomers of a certain stripe.

Why?

If it wasn’t the hair, it was the weed.

They hated the music for being too loud for Lawerence Welk and the women for being pushy enough to demand equality.

They thought you were a public menace, a firebug, for burning bras and draft cards.

If the Silent Generation had opened their collective mouths, they would have said, “America, love it or leave it.”

Wait, they did say that.

Both sides want you gone, but react in horror when boomer suicide numbers jump.

You can’t want them gone, then fault them when they check out early.

 

Portland baby boomers have the biggest advantage for day’s end.

So many great places and great beers are a treat for the woozy generation.

Call it a reward, which is a word few used when Blitz was the only beer in town.

The next time you see a man with a gray fringe ponytail riding a longboard down the street, know that he’s celebrating life and not cheating you out of your share of oxygen.

He’s out waving the remains of his freak flag.

There’s an older woman in a gingham dress and sandals in the park working her hula hoop.

Do you think ‘eventual slipped disc’ when you see her, or just another athletic lady?

Do you know what she’s thinking?

This is more fun than I thought. I asked.

 

 

Current technology is the wave boomers have been waiting to surf.

Once upon a time they met friends hitch hiking the interstate, or a music festival, or Alice’s Restaurant.

They made brothers and sisters for life, or at least until the end of the ride, the song, or the high.

Now they go online and the world rolls out in front of them.

Unlike younger people full of spite, boomers know a sunny day is better spent outside than holed up in a room looking at cat videos.

The stick in the eye to all who want boomers shuffled off this mortal coil comes with a walk down SE Hawthorne on a nice weekend.

A trip to Saturday Market or NE Alberta shows the same thing.

People like the handmade, the special meaning, the personal touch.

Big box stores packed full of cheap crap from a pollution cloud in China that break sooner than you’d expect aren’t going away as long as we keep buying it.

At the same time, we still need things that evoke a feeling.

You want hand thrown pottery? Hand carved wooden bowls? What are you, some kind of hippie?

If you say yes, thank a boomer.

 

PS: There’s no such place as Boomer Portland, unless you count Jake’s dining rooms on a Saturday night.

 

PSS: Check your mental health for defects if you focus on the negative world around you. It’s not going anywhere, but you might be.