I did the 60s in Diapers
by Heatherly Takeuchi
 Have you ever heard the saying “If you’re not the lead
dog, the view doesn’t change”? Well, have you ever
followed behind an elephant?! That’s what it feels like
growing up behind the Baby Boomers.
My much older sister and brother are Boomers and thus I was subjected to musical
marathons of classic rock songs from the cradle. Of course, it wasn’t called
classic rock then, because it was just rock and roll. My early training gave
me with the keen ability to later identify the endless renditions of “Hey
Jude” and “Mister Nowhere Man” played over Muzak at the local
mall. I was also the only kid in my grade school who could name all four Beatles
and all four Monkeys either by age or alphabetically!
With the coming of more years, it seems that the Boom generation loves to reminisce
about their childhood more and more, about things I have absolutely no concept
like Rin Tin Tin and Lassie. I mean, who the heck is Howdy Doody anyway? Or Kaptain
Kangaroo or Mister Green Jeans? Give me Sesame Street and Kermit
the Frog any day.
Unlike my older siblings, I learned about JFK and the Viet Nam war in history
class not in my living room in front of the TV. Although I loved the Apollo program,
much of the details and importance of the effort were “before my time”.
A recyclable Space Shuttle is much more in sync with my generation where we learned
to “take out the recycling” not the trash. Ecology is just a word,
not a new word. And why would I think of calling it “new math” when
it was the only math I have ever learned?
 TV. Now there’s something. I think my sister would drop dead if her TV
was out of service for more than a day or two. The constant background noise
of the boob tube playing allows her to breathe, to function, to think, ah there’s
the ticket! I know she can’t have a conversation without sounding like
a commercial and I catch her humming jingles more often than seems healthy. Can
I blame her too much? TV was her faithful companion as a child and is proving
to be the same in adulthood. Me? I could leave TV, yet I would have serious withdrawals
without my daily dose of email and web surfing. Words like ASCII, RAM, bits,
hyperlinks, and motherboard are part of life and hold no mystery for me. I learned
keyboarding, networking, and connectivity in school and I have no problem spelling
these words and using them correctly in a sentence.
One thing I am not looking forward to is paying the social security bill for
the mass of people ahead of me that is going through the system like a camel
through a pup tent. I expect to receive the name of my person in the mail within
the next five years as the number putting and the number taking out will soon
be one-to-one. Hey, sorry. Let me get off the political soap box. It is not a
place I feel comfortable, but something the “Now generation” did
so well. Peace marches, bra burnings, sit-ins, and drop-outs. Then many of the
children of love went to bed one night thinking about the next protest march
and woke up in the morning worrying about the stock market and treasury bonds.
Hey, let’s face it - age happens.
Let me admit that there is at least one advantage to following in the footsteps
of the hippies and beatniks…. Give me a minute, I’ll think of one.
Oh, yeah, pharmaceuticals! What you say? Yes, drugs, medicines, pharmaceuticals.
Some of the dope smokers of the 60s became the inventors of Prozac in the 90s.
Necessity is the mother of invention after all. The post-war kids are growing
older kicking and screaming and the ad agencies of Madison Avenue and the laboratories
of who-knows-where are helping them stay young both on the inside and the outside.
What a 900 pound guerrilla wants, a 900 pound guerrilla gets. In about a decade
from now, I will get to appreciate the sacrifice of all those women who went
before me and were subjected to the voodoo medicine of hormone replacement therapy.
Wrinkle removal should be an established art form by the time I need it. A couple
of years ago, I was happy that “the Pill” had been thought of and
invented. The boomers are responsible for creating the market for everything
from Propecia and Rogain to Estrogen and depot-provera. And when my husband and
I reach our silver or golden years, we may have the need to thank the people
for being human canaries and perfecting Viagra.
So all in all, maybe it’s not so bad having the path through the mind field
of life cleared ahead of me.
Thx, Baby Boomers. |
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