Home delivery
Contact us
Your account

E-mail article     Print view

LX And Counting

At the head of our generation, I'm leading us into old age

PREV |  of  | NEXT

ILLUSTRATED BY PAUL SCHMID

AFTER I WOKE UP the other day, it took a few minutes to realize something was wrong. I didn't feel bad, but I couldn't help sense that something was amiss in my life. Of course when I remembered why I had that "something is wrong" feeling, everything fell into place.

"Do I look any different?" I asked the Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston. When she wrinkled up her nose and shook her head, I started to think rationally.

What was wrong with me on that lovely October morning was the same thing that has been wrong with millions of other People Leading The Most Important Generation Ever To Set Foot On The Planet throughout the year 2006. These people are at the head of the huge body of humanity known as the baby boomers.

What got me rushing to look into the mirror and checking out all my body parts on this particular October morning was that I did something I never thought I would do. And that was — drum roll, please — I turned 60!

That is 60 years old! In other words: The Big 6 Zero. Double Nickels Plus Five. Or, as the Romans would write it, LX. (My children said even knowing about Roman numerals makes me old, and knowing that LX is 60 is beyond old. But there are some things you can't forget from Catholic school.)

Even as I typed this sentence, a chill ran down my spine. Well, maybe it wasn't exactly the kind of chill you get when something scares you. It was an actual chill. The kind of chill you get when you go outside and the temperature is below 60 and you need to put on a warm coat. And your wife starts talking to you like you think you remember your grandmother talking to your grandfather, saying things like, "Put on a coat or you'll catch your death, by golly!"

I remember hearing about my generation — officially known as The Post-War Baby Boom Generation — ever since I was a kid. The baby boomers are the kids born between 1946 and 1964, the babies created after our parents won World War II and felt so good about it that they decided to have lots of children. There are about 76 million of us boomers. During our lives, we have plugged up the cities, schools and highways, and now we are getting ready to fill up the hospitals.

From time to time I've seen charts showing the impact the baby boomers have had on the population. My favorite chart is the one of a python swallowing a pig. There is a long, skinny snake across a calendar starting in 1930 and then it suddenly balloons out in 1946 after the snake eats a pig. The pig moves through the snake's belly as a huge ball until 1964, when the pig is eliminated from the snake's digestive system. It's not a pretty picture, but that pig is my generation.

When I was a youngster (say under 30) I thought people who were 60 were, well, old. These people were known as "senior citizens," and as such, these fossils spent most of their days sitting on their front porches, yelling at kids to get off their lawns.As a young man, I thought most 60-year-old men looked like the movie actor Wilford Brimley, complete with baggy pants and droopy mustache. I can't say what I pictured a 60-year-old woman looking like because I'm not allowed to imagine women other than the Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston.

But it's unfair that women seem to age better than men. Most of the women I know look younger than their husbands, even when they are the same age. Of course, one of the reasons men look older than wives may be because the women are draining the life out of us, sort of like vampires.

When I mentioned my life-sucking theory to Mrs. Johnston, she said I would have never lived this long if it hadn't been for her.

"You would have exploded from eating Top Ramen," she said.

That may be true, but as Mrs. Johnston turned to walk away, she had a little smile, and that smile showed her teeth. I could have sworn that two of her front teeth looked like a vampire's blood-sucking teeth.

And she is looking younger each year.

Steve Johnston is a retired Seattle Times reporter. His e-mail address is stevejonst@aol.com. Paul Schmid is a Times news artist.