Have you noticed how everyone is crabby and crotchety these days? It is the Baby Boomers’ fault.
The Boomers have always transformed the texture of society ever since they arrived en masse after WWII.
They transformed popular music, fashion styles and redefined society as they reached adulthood.
They added the energy and enthusiasm of youth as they hit the work force. The privileged children of a generation that saw war and economic depression, they created and defined the notion of YUPPIE and changed how families were structured and defined. One could not imagine a group like the American Family television show existing casually in the 1930s.
The previous generations got old at 45 and started thinking of retirement and slowing down.
Not the Baby Boomers.
They want to stay youthful forever. They enter marathons, triathalons; they do hot yoga, all manner of youth extension activities.
While their parents traveled to see the Coliseum, Paris, the Tower of London, the Boomers want to hike up Kilimanjaro, visit ashrams in Nepal, or jungle tours of the Amazon.
But you have heard all that before.
So now as the Boomers hit their 50s and 60s and they are facing retirement, they are also changing the way that retirement happens as they ease into a “consultant” role rather than totally kick up their feet and sign up for a retirement home.
So now the early end of the Boomers reach 60.
And as their joints start to creak, they are signing up for new knees, hips, and hair plugs.
Notice how many drug commercials are on television now. That’s because Boomers also redefined their relationships with the medical trade.
They are taking more responsibility and accepting authority less. Like they have always done.
Their frustration with sagging bodies and faltering memories is taken out on the world in general. They are spreading their bad tempers like viruses. They are also becoming more and more cranky and curmudgeonly.
And like everything else they have done before, their attitudes are spreading through the rest of society. That’s why everyone else is becoming curmudgeons before their time.
Crabby is as crappy does.