Still feeling young

By MARK PATINKIN
The Providence Journal
Monday, October 22, 2007

Just as I was thinking of putting on one of my old tie-dyed shirts and queuing up some Rolling Stones, I saw some alarming news.

For the first time, a baby boomer has applied for Social Security.

Her name is Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, from Maryland, and she was born one minute into the year 1946. That's considered the start of the baby boom generation. It's called that because there were 80 million or so births between then and 1964. Folks my parents' age had three or four babies instead of the 1.9 that's more fashionable today so couples can buy BMWs.

I'm right in the middle of this crowd, having been born in 1953, and like many, I still, illogically, see myself as part of the youth culture. That will be harder to do now that my peers have begun to retire. Apparently, Kathleen Casey-Kirchling has long been considered the first baby boomer, so trend-spotters have been keeping an eye on her. It strikes me that her name alone is a symbol. I don't remember any hyphenated women when I was a kid.

I've done a pretty good job denying the onset of age; that's another generational skill. It first hit me hard four years ago when I turned 50. I was never the kind to mind birthdays, but that one was different. I still sometimes ask myself, "How did that happen?" Wasn't it just last week that I was among hundreds of young idiots on my college campus sliding down an icy sidewalk while seated on a cafeteria tray? Even 15 years later, if anyone from my class had mentioned Social Security as a personal concern, you would have thought they had just landed from the planet Neptune. Now, here we are.

Just last week I got another reminder. I was watching Brian Williams on NBC. Or maybe it was Katie Couric on CBS. I get confused because what I'm talking about here are the commercials airing nightly on both shows. They are for drugs like Flomax, which you take if you have a "going" problem, and I don't know who came up with that product name, but if you think about it, it's kind of gross. Cialis is also pitched regularly on network news, as is Preparation H and Boniva, which I think is what Sally Field takes now that she has gone from being the Flying Nun to a symbol of osteoporoses.

At first, I snickered at these ads, wondering what kind of pathetic demographic they were aimed at. Then I realized the answer: Me.

At what point did we go from the Pepsi Generation to the Cialis Generation? When did the counterculture's drug of choice go from marijuana to Flomax?

I might have known this day was coming a few months ago when Ameriprise Financial ran an ad for their retirement planning services with Iron Butterfly playing "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." In the late 1960s, that was the ultimate drug anthem. Now, they're using it to sell us 401(k)s

Here's another sign that took me aback: They have given an official label to the crop of kids who are the same age today that we were in the 1960s. They're called Millennials. It went from baby boomers to the X-Generation, to Y-Gens, and now -- Millennials. How could enough time have gone by for three youth generations to have come after us?

I have several offspring who qualify as Millennials. They are reminders that my peers and I are no longer arbiters of cool. I can't tell you how often my kids roll their eyes at me. It's like, "Let's see how many minutes it takes for Dad to text two words on his cell phone." When I try to tell them to put more classic rock on their iPods, they explain that "classic" actually means, "for really old people."

I'll admit I've changed in one area. I used to think all that mattered was saving the world. I have learned it's easy to have that priority when your father pays the mortgage. Now that my wallet's the one that everyone regards like it's the community trough, I have a different outlook. Remember what Cuba Gooding Jr. made Tom Cruise shout in Jerry Maguire? That's my new philosophy.

It will need to be. Life expectancy was 63 when Social Security was started in 1935. Now, it's 110, or at least it sometimes seems that way. If you do the math, it means Kathleen Casey-Kirschling and the other 80 million of us aren't easily going to be able to live on government checks alone issued by a dwindling account.

Not that we'll have to worry about that anytime soon.

I don't care what the demographers say, we're still the youth culture. Aren't we?

I think I'll queue up some Rolling Stones.

Reach Mark Patinkin at mpatinkin(at)projo.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com