Left in the Lee of the Baby Boomers

When my husband retired, we joined an organization called the Canadian Association of Retired People.  Acronym, CARP.  Like the AARP it is an advocacy and group discount organization for seniors that does a lot of lobbying of various governments about Seniors' issues.  It did a lot of carping, in fact, demonstrating gray power.  There was a monthly news magazine featuring discounts and bargains and descriptions of what the group was carping about that month.  Sort of dull and polite.  Then the organization got taken over by a man called Moses Znaimer and suddenly everything changed.  Notably, the magazine was rebranded for the baby boom generation and renamed Zoomer.

Zoomer?  Oh, come on. For the last while since the change, the magazine has featured famous people over forty five (the Zoomer generation!), people such as Wayne Gretzky and Helen Mirrim and Margaret Atwood. The feature articles on them have been interesting and certainly the glossy new format of the magazine, except for all the advertisements for face cream and makeup, is interesting. But this month, the featured famous person was the Queen.  Labelled as a Zoomer.

There she is on the cover with her trademark pearls and prim posture, uncharacteristically grinning at the camera. 

The feature article is all about how she has achieved her longevity. For me, the Queen is no more a 'Zoomer' than I am, and I do not, emphatically do not, wish to be so labelled.  I was born a few months after Pearl Harbor.  There are not all that many of us born in that period; I am only here because my father was in the Royal Canadian Navy and stationed on a corvette running convoys from Canada to England and so got leave in Canada from time to time. And when I was born, the Queen was sixteen. I am not a member of the baby boom generation; as a matter of fact, I have spent a lifetime being annoyed by the boomers, by the consumerism and the slick advertsing that promotes it.

I was raised by parents who lived through the 1930s depression as adults. Who lived through the full six years of World War II -- a war that is much more living history for me than Vietnam. As a teenager I wore bobby socks and sweaters on backwards with little white pin on collars and a skirt, always. Jeans and shorts were for Saturdays and the beach. Stereo was the new craze.  As a university student I had a 10:00 pm curfew in my dorm: I was called a coed and we were in a minority on campus.  When I married, the only divorces were granted by Parliament. My children wore cloth diapers -- of course. I had two babies and a husband in grad school during the late sixties; the whole flower power thing passed right over my head. A joint was something I cooked and served for Sunday dinner. 'Puff the Magic Dragon' was my babies' lullabye.

I like my stodgy image just fine.  It's how I was brought up, after all.  But all my life I have been overwhelmed and ignored in favour of the baby boomer explosion. My last two years at high school were noisy and confused because of the huge addition that was being built onto the school for the boomers. For most of my adult life the news, merchandise for sale, city planning, jobs and career choices have all been aimed at and tailored to the boomer demographic. And now, here we go again. The quiet tenor of my retirement years is being mocked by adding my generation backwards onto the boomers. My nursing home may well be overwhelmed with them before I go raging into the good night. And, to add injury to insult, I have to be called a zoomer?

Certainly, I do not zoom.  My granddaughter zooms as I plod after her plying my walking stick, providing a base from which she can explore and a touchstone for what was. For a viable way of life, one where food was cooked from scratch or preserved, most things were recycled, credit was not a daily option, people made things by hand, saved and did without. It was in no way a perfect world but it was one that, mostly, made a smaller imprint on the planet.

Both the Queen and I, I am sure, are very resistant to advertising and image manipulation; I hope to teach my grandchild to be the same. Besides, all the anti-aging potions and slick clothing in the Zoomer magazine are expensive.  I spend my free dollars on books.!

Original post for Canada Moms Blog.  When she isn't keeping score on the arrival of spring, Mary G also blogs at Them's My Sentiments.