(~4 minutes to read)
Boomers—do you act your age?
Related question; how do you think someone your age should act?
[This is the first of three articles that discuss age-appropriate behaviour (or misbehaviour). This week’s piece looks at what we do / should do / wish we could do. Part 2 discusses dress sense, and culture consumption choices are explored in part 3.
I think it’s universally accepted that a typical 10-year-old wouldn’t willingly sit in a rocking chair knitting tea cozies and toques all day. Likewise, your average octogenarian wouldn’t go base jumping.
But there’s a lot of greyness in between. (Hair colour gags are being ignored here—I’m talking about activity overlap.) And since Boomers are currently (2018) between 53 and 72 years old, they’re somewhere between base-jumping and toque-knitting, activity-wise.
There are forty-year-olds who skateboard and forty-year-olds who crochet. Doubtless there are forty-year-olds who enjoy both, although I’d hope they don’t crochet while skateboarding—the frustration of dropping a stitch or two in the halfpipe is almost guaranteed, and there’s a very real danger of the wool getting tangled up around the skateboard wheels.
More questions… What basis do you use for determining how someone your age should act? Your parents? Grandparents? A favourite mentor—perhaps a coach, teacher, youth leader or extended family member? And when making such determinations, do you take into account the effects of improved standards of living?
Aging is hard on the body, especially when you’re north of 60. (I’m not referring to degrees of latitude, although I’m sure life is less easy for older Canadians in the territories than in the provinces.) I’m told that aging gets even harder on the body after you turn 85—I sincerely hope I get to refute that. But with the benefit of better housing, diet and health education, older people no longer need to yield to the siren call of the winged-back chair and walking cane just because they think they’re part of a rite of passage to old age.
For example, there’s no way that at age 60, my dad could have played squash with me, yet I could and did with my son when I was 60.
Should I have been playing squash at 60? You bet—I need all the practice I can get!
Should I have been turning cartwheels at 58? Why ever not? (It impressed my great-nephew!)
Should I have been trampolining at 61? Maybe not—even though it impressed that same great-nephew—I ruptured a disc and spent over two months in acute pain. But that likely wasn’t my age so much as my less-than-optimum core muscle strength and a couple of buggered discs. (I’m fixing the former—I have to live with the latter.)
This all leads me to conclude that what you do or don’t do should be based more on your body’s ability to do it, rather than your perception of what is expected (or not) or dignified (or not) at any given age.
However, we do have to bear in mind how people of different ages perceive us. This, after all, is the whole pretext of the humour in that well-known and much-loved British sit-com, “Last of the Summer Wine” (I wish I had a couple of buddies my age living near me that I could act immature with! Sadly my immature buddies live in the UK.)
What do today’s children think of, for example, Boomers cross-dressing for fun, using phrases and telling jokes that aren’t as socially acceptable as they once were, or trampolining or cartwheeling? What do Gen-Xers think? At the other end of the spectrum, what do silent generation folks think of us immature Boomers?
The answers to most of those questions is (or should be) “I don’t care!” although, where children are concerned, we do have to be hyper-alert to nuances of our behaviour lest our intentions or motives are misconstrued.
For example, encouraging children to sit on your lap or entering their bedrooms uninvited are asking for trouble, unless your last name is Claus—and it’s only a matter of time before that gets kiboshed too.
As for what the silent generation thinks of Boomers—if 93-year-old John Wright is in any way typical, we Boomers can probably blame our parents’ generation for our attitudes. Sadly, he’s not typical (otherwise it wouldn’t be newsworthy), so we must do our own research if we’re interested enough to care what our elders think of us whippersnapper Boomers and our perpetual failure to acknowledge our increasing age.
Well, it’s time I quit writing, donned my ninja turtle costume, and went pogo-stick jumping in the river with my friends.
Don’t forget to leave a comment below telling the world what generation you belong to and what you think of the way the Boomers around you behave.