The Oldest Boomers

The Greatest Generation had an unknowing grace. They killed themselves by smoking, drinking a lot of alcohol, eating junk and eschewing exercise. My parents were virtually ancient when they died at 78 and 82.

But the the oldest Boomers are 79. They are very much beyond their parents, The Greatest Generation, as they greatly outlived them, by decades of doing fewer bad things, doing more good things, and fully buying into existential desperation, versus the rationalizations of smoking doctors and three martini lunches. Let alone meat and potatoes at every meal.

Now our President is 81 and wants to be president for another four years. The former President wants to be the next president and is 77 and, too, wants to run the country for at least another four years.

Neither smoke. One does not drink (but eats junk – has a questionable BMI.) The other may have a drink but eats with purity and has a perfect BMI. They are not killing themselves as the Greatest Generation so graciously did, avoiding the angst of age.

Anthony Fauci ran our country’s health into his late ’70’s. Supreme Court Justices are living well into their ’80’s. Other politicians are hanging on by not wrecking their own bodies.

But FDR was a wreck when he died at 63 in 1945.

But we Boomers are holding a vice grip on living with clawed and strengthened grasp. As we die, 2.6 Million a year, we are self-limiting, but we are also very good at raging against the dark. We accrued huge wealth as a generation, pushing over $30,000,000,000 onto our children to pay back, long after our attenuated death dates…

So on the internet made by our children, we Boomers use that megaphone to scream our Not Dead Yet-ness. Now, in the full heat of national politics.

Room temperature comes to us all. But not for 40 years, please.