“You’re doing fine,” I told her, trying to Boy Scout her into the spot.
“I am not doing fine!” she shouted. “It upsets me that I can’t pull right in!”
Like it was my fault. Like I was the one that said, “Get the triple-wide car, dear. It’ll be easier to maneuver with your arthritis.” And I was suddenly filled with the righteous anger of a guy in his mid-30s who is tired of hearing old Americans complain about things.
They are, I know, the greatest generation. They stormed the beaches at Normandy, smashed Hitler’s Fortress Europe, Rosie-the-Riveted a thousand warships and saved the world. And then, back home after years of blood and dirt and sacrifice, they raised bedroom cities and paved over orange groves, built skyscrapers and atom smashers and sent a man to the moon. But today, they mostly drive too slow, right blinker blinking, a sliver of mottled skull peeking over the driver’s side headrest like a yellow crescent moon, on their way to an early-bird dinner after a long day calling up talk-radio stations to complain about the cost of prescription drugs.
They are remarkably easy to hoodwink, these destroyers of fascism. When they get a letter from Ed MacMahon, many actually think they might “already have won.” When a callow voice oozes confidence over the phone, others cash in some long bonds and invest in Accutech International, or whatever rent-an-office outfit the boiler-room huckster is pushing. They purchase many of the lame products you see on late-night TV, from Craftmatic Adjustable Beds to Itty Bitty Booklights. Politicians can scare a million of them before breakfast, terrify the rest before lunch and claim to “save Medicare” by dinner-time, which is about 4 o’clock.
How did this generation–forged in war, tempered by mortar fire, flinty and rock-tough in their fatigues and counterman’s hats–get so whiny? How do you get from “Next stop, Tokyo!” to “Who’s going to pay for my Percocet?” How do you get from “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” to “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”?
For a clue, spend an hour watching a C-Span call-in show. Here is the true fault line of American politics: not left vs. right, but young vs. old. And it’s always the same clenched, angry voices, demanding the same free stuff, subsidized this and government-provided that. Young liberals and young conservatives may disagree, but they can all decipher a pay stub. They know what FICA stands for–it’s a transfer payment to Nana. “It’s the old people who vote,” cluck-cluck the talking heads and political pundits. But of course, they don’t say “old people,” do they? It’s “our nation’s seniors,” or something else so dignified and restrained that it’s hard to remember that they’re talking about the people in the car in front of you, straddling two lanes at 11 miles an hour. Young people, of course, aren’t watching C-Span during the day. They’re working.
Years ago, during one of PBS’s most irritating pledge drives, the featured program was hosted by John Bradshaw, a round-shouldered therapist whose way to healing is to root around in so-called “repressed memory,” trying to find a villain for all one’s ills–“I’m too fat, I’m too thin, I’m always sad.” His audience was predominantly people in their late 40s and early 50s. As the camera panned across their anxious, weeping faces, you could see that Bradshaw had figured out that the most consistent aspect of the baby-boomer psyche, from Woodstock to Lewinsky, was a willingness–no, an enthusiasm–for blaming it all on Mom and Dad. And, maybe even lecherous Uncle Joe.
Here were sovereign American citizens in the prime of their lives, blubbering, blaming, bear-hugging stuffed animals, trying to get in touch with something called their “inner child,” and an appalling thought shivered through me: what’s it going to be like when these people get old? Say this for the “greatest generation”: you don’t hear them pyschobabbling about “My mommy never hugged me” and “My father abused me emotionally” and “I’m really trying to get me to take care of me.” But when the boomers get old, it will be sanctimonious, aggrieved self-pity 24/7. The only thing worse than the hippies of 1968 will be the elderly hippies of 2018, storming my paycheck like the waves of brave men who once stormed Omaha Beach.
This year, I turned 37. Good friends of mine have two children–one 6, the other just turned 3. They are healthy, sunny, intelligent, and I love them dearly. But I can also do the math: when the boy is my age, I’ll be retiring and he’ll be entering his peak earning years; when the girl turns 35, I’ll be comparing cruise-line catalogs for the most generous midnight-buffet spread. So study well, my little children. Learn much. Work hard. For I’ll be waiting. I, too, am placing all my Egg Beaters in one basket.
