Aging Baby Boomers making us nuts...

Right before I married my wife, I had a big fixation with the Baby Boomer generation. I had just read the book '13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?' by Neil Howe and William Strauss and I was pretty obsessed with Baby Boomers.

If you don't know what Baby Boomers are, they are the generation of people born between 1946 - 1964. The authors of '13th Gen' separated the generations by 20 years, so they considered it 1941 to 1960. They listed Generation X as those born between 1961 to 1980. Until I read that book, I never really thought about generations and how others perceive them. It's a pretty interesting book. They basically laid out the realization that history dictates that one generation is given heaps of praise and expections while the one after or before that one is ignored and scorned. To that extent, this ran true for Gen Xers. The Baby Boomers were supposed to change the world and make it a better place. They sort of did, but the book lays out a lot of instances in which they make things a lot worse.

So I started noticing every time a newspaper article highlighted something that Baby Boomers tend to do. I would talk about it with my wife and she'd quickly get irritated because her parents are Baby Boomers and since she was in her early 20s, she never really gave it much thought. She would call me obsessed as I would rant about how much I hate the Baby Boomers.

One article talked about how a lot of women in their late 40s to early 50s are now dressing on the beach a lot more revealing than they used to. I guess they're making up for lost time. One woman is described as purring that it's very sexy. My question would be: to who? Certainly not to us younger people having to look at that. One article I just read said that Sophia Loren at 73 has curves that someone in their 20s would dream about and that people are still swooning over Paul Newman at 83. Who are these people that think this? Probably Boomers that are getting old themselves.

Another article I read talked about how Baby Boomers were going to change how retirement is done (even sexier!) and certainly current ads make you think that they are currently trying to do that.

As Boomers have gotten older, we've been overwhelmed by commercials that appeal to the Boomer lifestyle. They're easy to spot. Take this SUV commercial from a few years ago. We see a couple of Baby Boomers driving the larger model SUV through woods and forests. They are frantically trying to find something. At the end of the commercial, you get the pay off. The lady Boomer takes a snap shot of a wolf with her big telephoto lens. The message being that you deserve to own a big SUV because you have important things to do.

If you contrast that with a commercial from the same company aimed at Gen Xers, you see a different message. A Gen Xer couple is driving the smaller model SUV. They are arguing... about a hat. That's right. The woman hates the man's hat so she throws it out the window. He hightails after his hat in his SUV, jumps out, grabs the dusty hat and puts it on. The message? You're going to do stupid shit anyway because you're young, so why not do it in our sporty SUV?

Even to this day, the commercials aimed at Boomers are becoming more and more pointed that they are not just doing mindless pursuits. A current commercial shows a lady getting out of sporty vehicle and putting on a wet suit. The young hunks are checking her out. She then has three other girls, her daughters get out of the car. All four head to the beach with their surfboards. The message being that you're old, but still sexy even with three kids in tow. By the way, you still surf, so look how cool you've become! Nothing says sexy like young guys checking you out in front of your kids. Who's with me? Okay, that one isn't so annoying as wishful thinking. It wouldn't look so great to see how they probably use the vehicle: to get to work, go shopping, the movies and the golf course.

Every night we see commercials aimed at Boomers retiring, which is only natural because they're all getting old and the first crop of them just retired.

These commercials drive my wife nuts.

Rather than point out that they need to save money for retirement, the commercials again point out that being important people with important stuff to do, they shouldn't be happy just retiring. They need to open their own business! They need to build a sail boat out of scratch! They need to skydive! They need to ski!

One commercial even shows two aging couples flying to the middle of nowhere to go fishing. The guy then tells his buddy that they'll be able to do this whenever they want when they retire.

Isn't this supposed to be time when they're supposed to slow down a little? And does it always have to be overly complicated and dramatic?

Then again, it does make a little sense. After all, they were always labeled as the people that get things done. On the other hand, my generation is alway portrayed as the slackers that get by with minimal work, which I guess is sort of true. It's not that we don't like to work. We just don't want to work all the time.

But think about this, if you are going to retire, do you really want to start over in a new career like farming? Starting a small business is one thing, but these commercials have people launching major business investments when they are more likely to be complaining about their bad hips or the food poisoning on their latest cruise.

What I'm really looking forward to is when my generation gets near retirement age. The generations below mine are going to go nuts watching us take retirement to an extreme level. You'll see commercials where a skater is finally taking the next step and putting down the board. Then you'll see him opening a skate park or starting his own skate shop. You'll see old ladies partaking in roller derby just for kicks. You'll see old sky divers engaging in even more dangerous stunts because just because your life span is almost gone, doesn't mean your thrill of danger is, too. Instead of playing regular curling, seniors my age will be seen using themselves as the puck with their four buddies furiously sliding him or sweeping a path to knock out the other seniors. Instead of seeing us take trips to take pictures that no one will see, we'll take that trip so we can take stupid pictures or video of ourselves doing senseless stunts to post to You Tube.

I'm ready to start taking my extreme cruises where people my age climb the rock wall on deck, but rather slowly, which is fine. I can wait.