Another Day, Another List

There are people who just sit around making lists to put online. If you don’t already know it, the point of the posts is to get you to click on as many pages as possible, thereby exposing you to a ton of ads. You knew that right? I mean you knew it after the fifth time you got suckered into going through all those pages for nothing.

Just recently, the list that caught my attention was a list of concepts that baby boomers believed in, but subsequent generations will never understand. Intrigued, I went through the list (so that you would not have to…you’re welcome).

Numero uno on the list was Having loyalty to one employer. Not I, but many boomers took a job right out of college and retired from the same company. Gen Z job hoppers give it 2 years and move on.

Number two. Owning a home. Sadly, only 21% of millennials polled believe that will ever happen for them.

Number three. Phone calls vs texting. Girlfriends and boyfriends talked on the phone for hours. You had a sore ear when you finally hung up…no speaker phone button then. A quarter of 18 to 34 year olds say they never answer the phone. They are all Gen-Text.

Number four. Hard work? Or Work-Life balance. Boomers chose the former and younger generations, particularly Gen Z are not buying into it. If their employer doesn’t allow for a balanced lifestyle, they move on.

Number five. Marriage as a life goal. Boomers paired up early and often. In many cases, too early and too often. Younger generations may be okay with being with someone for life, but marriage – not so much.

Number six. Owning a car(s) was a big deal for boomers. It was our ticket to freedom and the ability to roam. Younger gens user ride-sharing apps and many have not bothered to get a license.

Number seven. Privacy versus sharing. Boomers are rather circumspect about their private lives while later generations find it totally normal to share their innermost life details to the point where we think they are oversharing. That’s not stopping them.

But that’s not all. Buying used instead of new. Respecting authority without question. Using television as their news source. Paying with cash. You can guess which side younger gens came down on without my dissection.

No, don’t thank me for saving you the trouble of reading another list. It was my pleasure.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that's not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.

Here's Looking at You Kid

 

Someone called me a whiz kid because I knew how to record a voice memo on an iPhone. He’s a few years older than me, but it got me thinking that if I qualify as a kid, maybe it was time to start to giving the “Kid” moniker to anyone younger than me.

The server at the Indian restaurant will be Kid Curry, the UPS driver will be Kid Brown, which means the other delivery guy will be Kid Fed. My coffee will be expertly brewed by Kid Barista and I’ll purchase my jeans from Kid Levi. Movie tickets will be purchased from Kid Flic and burgers from Kid Mac. Kid Firestone will rotate my tires and Kid Kroger will bag my groceries. Kid Cable will keep my TV going and with any luck, I’ll never have to watch any of the shameless shenanigans of Kid Kardashian.

When you’re a kid, you don’t want be called kid. As in, “Scram kid.” Or W. C. Field’s line, “Go away kid, ya bother me.” And being someone’s kid brother or kid sister isn’t exactly the description a young person wishes to be called.

But attitudes change and the years have mellowed my opinion about being “the kid.” Being the youngest carries no stigma anymore. On the contrary, when you put a bunch of boomers in a room, it’s quite the honor to be considered the kid.

It’s a storied tradition when you think about it. The Cisco Kid, Billy the Kid, Kid Shane, Karate Kid, Cudi the Kid, Kaitou Kid, Heartbreak Kid, Ringo Kid, Rawhide Kid, Two-Gun Kid, and who could forget the Sundance Kid. In the movie Casablanca, Rick toasts Ilsa with “Here’s looking at you kid.” That line is one of moviedom’s most famous.

A kid is young. A kid can get away with stuff. A kid has a certain joi de vivre, and who doesn’t want that? Yep, I’m liking this “kid” thing. I like being called kid, and I think I’m really going to enjoy calling younger people “kid.”

It’s a lot better than whippersnapper.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.

Driving Nowhere

When we were really desperate to drive somewhere, anywhere, we would pry out the back seat of the Mercury to look for loose change. In the bowels of the strange brown matting beneath the seat we would find nickels, dimes, pennies, and every now and then, a precious quarter. It may not sound like much now, but gas was 32 cents a gallon in those days, so 50 cents bought us some quality time on the back roads of New England.

We could take the MGA out by the reservoir and watch the beams of light from the headlights bounce off the rows and rows of pine trees that made up the watershed. After midnight, with the top down, all we could hear was the roar of the wind and the purr of the motor. Long straight roads were our late night entertainment as we pushed the MG to see just how fast it could go. The speedometer hit sixty, seventy, eighty, and sometimes ninety before the lights of an oncoming car would force us to click off the high-beams and ease off the accelerator.

Other teenagers parked at “the plaza” and went from car to car, making up lies about who was having sex and who wasn’t, which “good girls” really weren’t good girls, and countless other topics of absolutely no importance that whiled away their time. We, on the other hand, had to be on the move. The whole point of having a car was to be in it, to be one with it, and to always, always keep moving. Could we make it to the border of the next state and back on less than half a tank of gas? It’s not as hard as it sounds in a region of small states, but it was about the adventure. We tested our driving skill and teenage luck.

In hindsight, it’s easy to see how invulnerable we thought we were. It never occurred to us that you might lose control of an Oldsmobile Starfire doing 110 m.p.h. out on the interstate. All we knew back then was that our instincts were telling us to get out on the highway and drive (Steppenwolf “Looking for Adventure” anyone?).

Whatever happened to driving nowhere? Four dollar per gallon gas in the 70s and three dollar gas today would be answers, but maybe computers and video games provide a vicarious (and safer) sense of escapism. Besides, cars have become so complex that we no longer understand how they operate, and where’s the romance in that?

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.