It wasn’t supposed to be like this
You have seen us around. Marching like lemmings into big box home centers, we try to reconnect with our self reliant ancestry. Our grandfather’s built their own houses, but we need Bob Vila to show us how to fix the ceiling fan.
We are secretly dark men. Hating ourselves while taking long drags on unfiltered Camels, we are miserable. Born into the most prosperous and dynamic generation in history, we pissed much of our potential away. Our superficial mantra is “He who dies with the most toys wins.” To this end, we shine custom chromed Harley’s in three car garages as our post-menopausal wives open the mail and find another overdue credit card bill. Now, in our fifties and sixties, watching Wrangler waistlines expand and 401K balances contract, we bitterly march in Tea Party formations railing against an imagined Liberal enemy. We medicate our sallow skinned children into submission and anesthetize our unfulfilled American dreams with designer vodkas and micro-brewed beers.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
We are the sons of the “Greatest Generation.” Our parents built the most advanced and prosperous society in history. Born after the Second World War, and coming of age in the happy days of the nineteen fifties and the passionate social enlightenment movements of the nineteen sixties, we Boomers baptized ourselves in the holy waters of optimism. We would land a man on the moon and invent the Internet. We embraced Ray Charles and birthed the Beatles. Together, we fought for civil rights and elected the first Black president. Dutifully, we went to Viet Nam, and today we reluctantly send our kids to the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan. We cheered as USA Hockey won Olympic gold, and, arm in arm, we cried in horror as the Twin Towers fell.
We are simultaneously the best and the worst that America produces. An enigma wrapped up in a contradiction. We build and we destroy with impunity. We callously step over the homeless man on our way to meet our buddies at the sports bar, never considering that we may be only a few drinks away from the same fate. But, on the weekend we participate in the “fun run” for cancer research, take our kids for ice cream, and pretend that all is well in our deed restricted world.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
