Are you a Baby Boomer?

[vashondan2018]

Yep, born in 47. Definitely simpler times until after high school when Vietnam hit the proverbial fan. Yes, to neighborhoods filled with same aged kids and to original skateboards with metal wheels from skates. Appreciate ALL of the music even into the 50's as my sister was 7 years older than me. Hate when websites want you age and you have to go all the way down, down the list to get to 1947!

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by rsay777

Yes and I remember making my own custom skateboard with 2x4's and the wheels of an all metal skate. Then, finding a steep sidewalk to test it on. I never broke any bones but I did use plenty of first aid supplies.

Ha!! born in 1950 I did exactly the same thing 2X4 and the old metal skates that clamped on your street shoes

[Dru Edwards]

Originally Posted by 1neeto

Gen X child of boomers here. I identify a lot with the boomer generation because of how I was raised.

With that said...ok boomers have your thread. [emoji1787]

+1. I have more in common with the Baby Boomer generation than the Millennial generation.

[FrankHudson]

I'm mostly with RaySachs on this one, the "generation" labels have some informal validity assuming somewhat shared location and class, but the system breaks down because:

There's no set length for a generation in number of years.

The more general meaning of generation, meaning age gap of parents to children or children back to grandparents etc is increasingly messy because the age of childbearing is wide, perhaps even wider now.*

Whatever that somewhat varying length is, there's no always-available Year Zero.**

As several upthread have mentioned, folks early in some presumed generation have significant differences in shared experiences from those later in the same presumed generation. This could be fixed by shortening the assumed length definition of generation, but there doesn't seem to be much interest in doing that.

To some degree "past generations" have overlapping experiences with more recent generations. Yes, there are some differences due to the age the experience happened for someone, but the similarities of experiencing some things may overwhelm that. For example: people from the so-called Greatest and Silent Generations experienced The Sixties along with the Boomers (sometimes beside them). Many/Most of the people one thinks of as an example "Sixties Person" aren't Boomers. Most Punks/New Wave musicians were Boomers, aren't they supposed to be Hippies. My wife and I aren't of the same generations in any charts, yet we both experienced the 80s and the MTV/video era. My parents and I both experienced the events of the Kennedy Administration.


*My teenager says his teacher was surprised this month that someone in his class had a father who remembered the Vietnam War for example. I'm not any kind of demographic median there, but I doubt I'm a complete unicorn in that either.

**Having two World Wars in the past century helped the generational concept as we are to understand it today get established. They make for very convenient and easy to agree on Year Zeros, and because they were World Wars, there's a wider geographic range of some shared experiences.

[Caddy]

Originally Posted by Wade Hampton

You’re a Boomer.

When I was a kid every house on my block except one had kids living there, and all of the fathers had been in WWII with the exception of one dad who’d been in Korea.

The nice thing about having that many kids in the neighborhood was that you could always find someone to play with.


whm

And that was back in the days when we kids actually played outside. I very rarely see any kids playing outside now. A few years ago a local high school football coach told me one day he thought he would drive around town and talk to kids playing (or playing sports) outside and talk to them about going out for the football team. When I asked him how that went he told me he had driven around town for nearly an hour and never saw one kid outside.

Back when I was grade school age in the 50’s we were always outside. Sandlot baseball was a really big thing. Behind our grade school there were 5 ball fields with backstops. If you group didn’t get there by 7:00 AM all the fields would be already taken then you had to hope that some of them needed another player or two. We played all morning, go home for a quick lunch and go back and play until dinner time. I often got in trouble with my dad for doing so on days when I was to play a Little League game that evening, especially on days I was to pitch. Even of the few days we didn’t do that we were playing something outside and riding our bicycles all over town. Our parents always had a hard time getting us to come in at the end of the day, or even for meals.

[Highroller]

Originally Posted by Methos1979

Nope - Jones generation.

That's a new one for me, too. But it's perfect. - thx

[ewalling]

I was born December '58, so I'm an English boomer. I remember my mother teaching me the names of the Beatles as if they were members of the royal family, which, in a way, I suppose they were!

[raysachs]

Having just read up on it, I guess Generation Jones is largely what I was talking about earlier in terms of early and late Boomers. So it severs the Boomer generation at 1954 and adds in a few years of early Gen X, although I didn't see what those years were spelled out. So I clearly am one.

But what I've been reading about Gen Jones indicates we're generally pessimistic and angry about everything that the older Boomers got that we missed out on. That's somewhat true economically - we reached adulthood just as high inflation and high interest rates were making it nearly impossible to buy a home or get a foothold.

But OTOH, I wouldn't have traded places with the older Boomers for anything. We benefitted from so many cultural battles they fought - we took for granted in our teen years so many things they had to battle for in their teens and early 20s. And, we didn't have to make soul crushing decisions about whether or how to serve during Vietnam. They grew up with a ton of dislocation and tumult - we grew up relatively free and easy in comparison, taking for granted much that they had to fight for at great emotional cost, at the very least. The payback was that we reached adulthood at the end of the postwar hyper-prosperity and the beginning of a longer term economic reality settling in. To me, those were tradeoffs that worked to the favor of us Jones's, but obviously many people felt quite differently.

I'm definitely in favor of some sort of demographic split in there, though, and Generation Jones does that, in a fairly reasonable place, I think.

-Ray

[woodbox]

raysachs wrote on page 1 in post 8:

“ Sorry for the long winded-ness... “

It’s funny ray, cuz I was really enjoying your narrative.
Thanks for the accurate snapshot of life in the 60’s.

And then he writes well again just now.

[Nimiety]

Great stories!

I agree that there's quite a difference between early and late boomers.

I'm at the tail end as well. My Dad was 14 when he joined the army (after years of starvation resulting from Stalin's purges), 16 when he was hit by shrapnel from an exploding grenade, 17 when he got out of the hospital and had to start working to help support his widowed mother and younger siblings. He suffered some skeletal issues from malnutrition, but was one of the strongest, gentlest men I know.

My mother was 13 when she was housed in a "work camp" and beaten to the point of needing several weeks of hospitalization.

War sucks.

I think I'm very lucky in that I had a wholesome upbringing, but with a very real awareness of how bad it all could be. I don't think my kids and their cohorts have a clue.

[dermeister1331]

Originally Posted by Highroller

Handy little guide here if you're unsure ...



Chronologically I'm definitely a boomer, but my life experience seems to have more in common with that of a Gen X'er.

I'd agree with raysach's comments above: early and "late era" boomers had two different experiences. A lot of the stuff associated with boomers we late era ones experienced either at a very young age, or second hand thru our older siblings.

For example, we knew about Haight-Ashbury and Woodstock, but couldn't go to either. Hey, we were only ten! LoL !

---

As far as having different experiences goes, you could say the same about millennials, as far as childhoods go. I was having a discussion with one of my students the other day, born 11 years after me, about how people on the older end of the millennial spectrum like myself can remember a time before the internet and virtual/digital world, whereas he can not. And also remembering a time before 9/11.

[TBman]

Another 55 baby here. I grew up in a great little town right over the NY border. It was like living in a "Leave it to Beaver" town.

[Highroller]

Originally Posted by dermeister1331

As far as having different experiences goes, you could say the same about millennials, as far as childhoods go. I was having a discussion with one of my students the other day, born 11 years after me, about how people on the older end of the millennial spectrum like myself can remember a time before the internet and virtual/digital world, whereas he can not. And also remembering a time before 9/11.

And that's a huge thing - do you remember a time before the internet? Massive cultural divide there.

For the early/late boomer era, the question is similar but different - do you remember a time before Television? Equally giant cultural divide. Early boomers can, late "Jones" ones (like me) can't.

I don't even want to think about "not remembering 9/11". Are there really people in the world that young? LoL!

[RP]

Born in 1950, father fought in WWII, and watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Definitely a card carrying boomer....

[TRose]

Born in 64.
A very late Boomer.
Pun sort of intended.

Ray Sachs nailed it.