Boomers\u2014do you act your age?<\/p>\n
Related question; how do you think someone your age should act?<\/p>\n
\n[This is the first of three articles that discuss age-appropriate behaviour (or misbehaviour). This week\u2019s piece looks at what we do \/ should do \/ wish we could do.\u00a0 Part 2<\/a> discusses dress sense, and culture consumption choices are explored in part 3<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I think it\u2019s universally accepted that a typical<\/em> 10-year-old wouldn\u2019t willingly sit in a rocking chair knitting tea cozies and toques all day. Likewise, your average<\/em> octogenarian wouldn\u2019t go base jumping.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s a lot of greyness in between. (Hair colour gags are being ignored here\u2014I\u2019m talking about activity overlap.) And since Boomers are currently (2018) between 53 and 72 years old, they\u2019re somewhere between base-jumping and toque-knitting, activity-wise.<\/p>\n
There are forty-year-olds who skateboard and forty-year-olds who crochet. Doubtless there are forty-year-olds who enjoy both, although I\u2019d hope they don\u2019t crochet while<\/em> skateboarding\u2014the frustration of dropping a stitch or two in the halfpipe is almost guaranteed, and there\u2019s a very real danger of the wool getting tangled up around the skateboard wheels.<\/p>\n
More questions\u2026 What basis do you use for determining how someone your age should act? Your parents? Grandparents? A favourite mentor\u2014perhaps 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?<\/p>\n
Aging is hard on the body, especially when you\u2019re north of 60. (I\u2019m not referring to degrees of latitude, although I\u2019m sure life is less easy for older Canadians in the territories than in the provinces.) I\u2019m told that aging gets even harder on the body after you turn 85\u2014I 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\u2019re part of a rite of passage to old age.<\/p>\n
For example, there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Should I have been playing squash at 60? You bet\u2014I need all the practice I can get!<\/p>\n
Should I have been turning cartwheels at 58? Why ever not? (It impressed my great-nephew!)<\/p>\n
Should I have been trampolining at 61? Maybe not\u2014even though it impressed that same great-nephew\u2014I ruptured a disc and spent over two months in acute pain. But that likely wasn\u2019t my age so much as my less-than-optimum core muscle strength and a couple of buggered discs. (I\u2019m fixing the former\u2014I have to live with the latter.)<\/p>\n
This all leads me to conclude that what you do or don\u2019t do should be based more on your body\u2019s ability to do it, rather than your perception of what is expected (or not) or dignified (or not) at any given age.<\/p>\n
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, \u201cLast of the Summer Wine\u201d (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.)<\/p>\n
What do today\u2019s children think of, for example, Boomers cross-dressing for fun, using phrases and telling jokes that aren\u2019t 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?<\/p>\n
The answers to most of those questions is (or should be) \u201cI don\u2019t care!\u201d although, where children are concerned, we do have to be hyper-alert to nuances of our behaviour lest our intentions or motives are misconstrued.<\/p>\n
For example, encouraging children to sit on your lap or entering their bedrooms uninvited are asking for trouble, unless your last name is Claus\u2014and it\u2019s only a matter of time before that gets kiboshed too.<\/p>\n
As for what the silent generation thinks of Boomers\u2014if 93-year-old John Wright<\/a> is in any way typical, we Boomers can probably blame our parents\u2019 generation for our attitudes. Sadly, he\u2019s not typical (otherwise it wouldn\u2019t be newsworthy), so we must do our own research if we\u2019re interested enough to care what our elders think of us whippersnapper Boomers and our perpetual failure to acknowledge our increasing age.<\/p>\n
Well, it\u2019s time I quit writing, donned my ninja turtle costume, and went pogo-stick jumping in the river with my friends.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Boomers\u2014do 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\u2019s piece looks at what we do \/ should do \/ wish we could do.\u00a0 Part 2 discusses dress sense, and culture consumption choices are explored in part 3. I… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[575,490],"tags":[589],"class_list":["post-1244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boomerhumour","category-the-commentaries","tag-act-your-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}