The implication of the phrase is that anyone in the baby boom generation (born between 1946 and 1964) have had everything so easy and can’t possibly understand what someone else is going through. It’s also a way of negating the experience of older people. This is a really weird aspect of human nature that seems to be hard-wired and counter-productive. Don’t listen to your elders, gyrate your hips like Elvis Presley and do all the things they could have told you were mistakes. Clearly, as humans we need to make our own mistakes and think we are the first to invent the wheel.
I’m generation X, so I could stomp around and shout, “Okay Boomer. Whatever. Just know that it’s not fair!”
It’s such a horrible ageist position to take, though. Just because a generation had a lot of things that were great (introduction of free healthcare, lots of them paying tax, high employment, the ability to buy their own homes) it doesn’t mean they didn’t have hardships, or that they can’t empathise with the difficulties of the current generation. Empathy is a gift. Those shouting, “Okay Boomer,” at everyone they disagree with would benefit from that gift.
I know lots of Boomers who have virtually bought their children’s houses, acted as free childcare and are selfless, wonderful, compassionate people. They understand. They also know that when they bought their own houses they didn’t eat out every night, have two foreign holidays a year and furnish their homes with expensive grey matching furniture. They used the packing crates for furniture and huddled round a calor gas fire.
This ageism makes people feel as though they should be ashamed of getting older. They are made to feel as though they should apologise for the perceived luck of their generation, float into the background or pretend to be much younger than they are.
Yesterday, I walked into town at lunchtime, to get some fresh air and keep my head straight. (We recorded our school CD - 15 tracks in 3 hours, with the whole school, the staff, choir, flute group and each class.) I was stopped by a young woman collecting for the deaf. I say collecting but what they actually do these days is steal your bank details. I honestly would have been more than happy to chuck a few quid into a bucket but there you go, I’m showing my age again. I knew what she was doing when she approached and I could have walked on and genuinely muttered, “too busy,” but it’s not the nicest of jobs and it doesn’t hurt to be friendly.
“Oh, you stopped,” she gushed, “you must be a very nice person.”
Awkwardly, I shifted from foot to foot and checked the Town Hall clocks in the distance.
“Do you have children?” She asked.
“Yes but they’re grown up.”
“Really? How old are they?”
My inner voice was telling me to run away but I told her that my oldest was 25.
“Twenty five? Wow. Really? That must make you in, like, your forties?”
My brain was shouting, ‘Bullshit alert.’ I wasn’t finding her obvious attempts flattering.
“No, I’m in my fifties,” I told her.
“No way!” she gasped.
‘Yes way’, I thought. What’s wrong with being in your fifties?
“You don’t look it. What’s your secret?” She wittered on.
Sleeping for 4 hours a night, not having time to eat properly, having at least one stressful event a day until Christmas. Having both parents die within 18 months of each other, having PTSD, being menopausal, selling a house. Join me. You too can have huge bags under your wild shining eyes and wrinkles on your wrinkles.
She carried on talking about deaf children and how they were raising money to get sign language on the curriculum (Good luck with that. There’s not enough time to do everything as it is).
“Do you know any sign language?” She randomly asked.
“Oh, just the essentials” I said, chopping my hand under my arm, making the sign for ‘crap’.
I’m mortified. How could I have been so rude? Okay Boomer.
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