Guest post by Suzanne Fluhr
Boomeresque: Definition
1. Adj.: Describing a person born between 1 Jan. 1946 and 31 Dec. 1964
2. Adj.: Description of a person, place or thing possessing Baby Boomer je ne sais quoi
3. See also, Boomer, Esq.: A Baby Boomer who is also a licensed attorney (like the author of this guest post)
You know you are Boomeresque if:
- You know what “duck and cover” means and in elementary school you believed doing that would save you from a nuclear bomb.
- Your lawyer, doctor and accountant are younger than you are.
- Your eighty-something year old mother thinks you’re a genius about computers and wireless communication, but your twenty-something year old child thinks your technology questions merit eye rolling.
- You have to be reminded that if anyone under 35 says something is “sick”, s/he means it’s cool—i.e. good.
- Growing up, your home telephone wasn’t a “land line”….because what else could it have been.
- You and your parents did not enjoy the same music, but your kids like “classic rock” (unless you are in the car dancing to it while you’re driving him/her somewhere).
- Your pediatrician made house calls.
- You had the measles, mumps and chicken pox, but not polio.
- You watched TV in black and white, the TV was a piece of furniture and a TV repairman would come to the house to replace the tubes.
- You know who Mr. Green Jeans was.
- You had to watch a TV show when it was actually being broadcast.
- Your father fought in World War II, but growing up, when you talked with him about ”the” war, it was Viet Nam and it’s possible that you were against it.
- You had a transistor radio and maybe you even made it.
- You remember where you were when President Kennedy was assassinated.
- You remember Walter Cronkite describing astronauts returning to earth in a capsule that deployed a parachute and “landed” in the ocean.
- You know where you were and who you were with when you watched Neil Armstrong’s “small step for man and giant leap for mankind”.
- If you lived in or traveled through the South (in the U.S.), you had to use a bathroom and drinking fountain designated for your race.
- You remember the United States Congress doing big things like passing the Civil Rights Acts and creating Medicare.
- You remember that if you wanted a drink of water outside your house or a restaurant, you had to drink that yucky stuff that came out of a drinking fountain.
- If you were out in the street and you wanted to call someone, you had to find a pay phone.
- Your parents made a point of answering the home telephone so they would know who was calling you.
- You took home economics (if you were a girl) and wood shop (if you were a boy).
- When you were in the fourth grade, you didn’t know how to type—let alone keyboard.
- You got grades for handwriting.
- Your school was so overcrowded that your assigned seat in chemistry class was on the radiator.
- When you started high school or college, you were a fresh”man” even if you were female.
- You coveted your college roommate’s electric typewriter and shower bonnet hair dryer.
- You had to go to a library to do research for school projects unless your family was fortunate enough to own a set of encyclopedias.
- You know what a card catalogue was.
- u know how 2 spell & punctuate—even if u dont always do it anymore
- At some point you engaged in sex, drugs and rock and roll—not necessarily in that order—but perhaps simultaneously.
- You inhaled.
- There were urinals in the ladies room at your law school.
- You thought your parents were old when they were fifteen years younger than you are now.
- You considered your grandparents to be really old when they were the same age you are now.
For Baby Boomer travels for the body and mind, check out my new-ish blog: www.boomeresque.com