clipping scintillator: Baby Boomers

Baby Boomers We are seventy-six million strong. We are that group of children born post WWII ? 1946 to 1963.

We went to Woodstock and Vietnam, we rode city-buses and protested in Central Park. We partied in the Village, surfed the coast, souped up our cars, chopped out motorcycles, grew our hair long ? went to war, or Canada, as the case may be.

According to a sixties song we are a generation lost in space.

I was ?born in 1954. I qualify.

After World War II, men came home from Europe and the Pacific, combat weary and ready to raise a family. By the millions they starting having babies.

Society was on the brink of a shift in culture never before seen on this planet. The simplicity of life was about to get a whole lot more complicated.

Baby Boomer We watched an enemy we didn?t know park atomic warheads 90 miles from Florida. We climbed under our desks in response. (I still haven?t figured that one out.) We were this close to being?wiped out by an media built enemy. I?ve learned that Children in Russia can die just as fast as children in South Carolina. I didn?t know that then.

We watched Kennedy get shot in Dallas and sometime later his brother met the same fate.

We watched men walk on the moon.

Everything changed and we went along for the ride. Elvis, The Beatles, and The British Invasion stepped aside for Donna Summer and Disco.

Nixon resigned, J. Edgar died, Twiggy was the rage, and Laugh-In rebuilt television from the laugh-track up.

From the 70s to now we saw major technological advances in computers, health care, communications and space exploration. We started having children.

The 80s gave us the internet and some short years later our children were having children. We had gone from the counter-culture to grand-children in the span of 30 years.

Today we are on the verge of crossing the finish line at the promised land of retirement.

Funny thing is the game changed on the way to Social Security. Now that we are here the folks guarding our investment are saying ? ?Oops- we didn?t know you were coming so soon. We had to use your money to pay for other things ? like war and bailing out auto companies and saving mortgage bankers from the cost of their own greed.?

A day of reckoning is upon us and the old chants of the 60s may come in handy?

?By the time we got to Woodstock? we were half a million strong. And everywhere was a song and a celebration.?

I am baby boomer ? hear me creak!

Baby Boomer