Friday, January 8, 2016

Are you a Baby Boomer?

If you were born in the year 1946 during the demographic post–World War II baby boom, then you are among the Baby Boomers who will reach the age of 70 in 2016. Of course, if you had a birthday during the first week of January or perhaps even today, then, that milestone has already been reached. It is estimated that 3.4 million babies arrived in that first year of what became known as the Baby Boomer or 'Me' Generation.

The 20th century brought about an escalade of change from the infancy of the airplane, automobiles and radio in the beginning to the modernization of the kitchen and domination of television mid-century to spaceships, computers, cell phones and wireless Internet at the end. The steps to new ideas and innovation rose higher and higher with each passing decade bringing more and more to each riser along the way. And, guess who stands out right in middle of it all...

Boomer nostalgia ranks at the top of the list of conversations relative to comparative purposes whereby each boomer relishes in remembrances of the past they lived that changed the course of history. How many times have you spoken or heard the saying, 'Things were so much better back in the day!" Better than what? It all depends upon what is being compared and opinions differ as much as salt and pepper.

Every generation of Americans is perversely nostalgic about its formative years. The Greatest Generation is so romantic about the tragedies and victories of World War II that you’d think every last one of them stormed the beaches at Normandy, then returned to kiss a pretty lady in Times Square on V-J Day. Generation X, on the other hand, tends to forgo reminiscences of the fall of the Berlin Wall or the horrors of 9/11 for wistful ruminations on Freakies cereal, the superiority of the original Star Wars action figures or that time Scott Baio played a stoner on “ABC Aftersc'hool Special... . But boomers clearly take the prize in the nostalgia sweepstakes.” [Source: The Washington Post]

As you already know, the Baby Boomers, aka 'Me Generation', glorify their past. BUT, get ready! 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of a plethora of events of the 1960s!
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