Here’s the thing about talking about different generations and then profiling them: Easy trap.
For instance, sometimes I sit on my back porch and listen to a concert cellist neighbor playing on his front porch down the road. Easy to profile him because he’s bald, interesting, and keeps to himself. Must be a Boomer.
Ah, Baby Boomers: Donald Trump is a baby boomer. Because of profiling, one would think he would have at least tried pot, danced at a CCNY or Eagles concert, and protested without stopping until compromise was reached, right?
Baby boomers went to college but educated themselves. That’s because college authority was like high school authority – it was teachers and administrators of The Silent Generation, born between 1925 – 1945, an austere group of people who were alive for the Great Depression, the Dustbowl, and World War II: Boomers’ parents – the ones with a nearly zero divorce rate.
They were worn out from the start. They told awful jokes. They knew hard work. They relied on structure and group participation in both regulations and expectations. They knew they only had each other to conquer their predicament of poverty, war and crummy weather.
They built schools, hospitals, bridges, airlines and roads. They built their own churches, and that’s the way it should be. They never forgot if someone sterilized them out of $9.
Yet, they under-anticipated their influence. They simply expected their children to do just as they did, but in a newer car.
Tom Brokaw wrote that they were the Greatest Generation due to overcoming hardship and their participation in war. Is humanity’s highest calling to win at war?
Well, fortunately, the Silent Generation knew how to make kids and they made good ones. Their generational starkness bred rebellious artists and free thinkers who were proud to live on the edge and be unquiet. A generation with a Make Love Not War mantra and an aversion to anything pastel.
Boomers got away from calling their kids Tom, Dick and Mary and gave their children sensible names: Emeril, Barack, Prince, Madonna.
It’s easy to profile Boomers, being one, but I found myself in another garage this week. This time it was with a boy/man is his 20s, a woman in her 30s and a four-time father in his 40s. There is no way to profile these three.
They listened to each other. They had up-to-date Covid information and opinions, they knew how to wire the router to the computer to the Netflix to the TV and trace the lack of a picture back to a bad wall plug and fix it.
They had style and humor, spontaneity, dogs and kids, they exchanged recipes and were utterly exhausting, but in the way that makes you fight sleep the way a baby does – you can’t take in any more information, nor can you stop.
They were from Gen X, Millennial and Gen Z. So, we had four generations, four different starting points, four different ways of making a living, four different ways of giving directions.
It was when they started talking about the trade deficit that it was clear they would vote. “The primary export of the United States is war,” the Gen X’er said.
“No,” replied the Millennial. “The Internet might create more distance, but it also creates more connection. Nobody wants war. Not even the crazies. We got this.”
Yeah, that’s what I saw in this week’s garage. Shimmers.