‘We shall survive: How Baby Boomers today compare with their grandparents’

Yes, Baby Boomers, we got there! We are now as old as our grandparents once were. Snow sprinkles atop in these, our golden years. We can look at our young ones, growing up in a new digital, pandemic world. They are all being educated in a different way, and mostly seem to be managing well.

We are the ones who are now our grandparents’ age, when we were young. We were the ones who stood for hours at cinemas in our flared jeans, waiting to see Star Wars. Then we adored the film ET the Extra-Terrestrial.

Nowadays, we can recall the words of every song we sang in the 1960s and ’70s, but we forget why we walked into the kitchen at all. Some days we can wake up and not know what the date is, our simple life in the slow lane.

But we try and look intelligent, as we are now the ageing generations. We do the housework sparkle, humming to the song we once danced to, ‘I will Survive’. Classic lyrics. So I, for one, mop a white floor again, doing stuff with a minimum fuss. Nothing really to discuss. I think there should be little whinging about such first world non-issues. That includes listening to the media reading silly Shakespeare scripts, on radios and large televisions.

After such hyperactivity, cleaning white surfaces, I keep calm and read social media on my smartphone. Sad, but true, many of us used to have bright eyes, now we can stare at our phones. This is the life and times where we dwell. On the other hand, in my little corner of the world, I have met a couple of young dole recipients, who cannot even afford an email address. They are the underprivileged in society.

We are now the age of our grandparents once were. Many of us viewed old-fashioned television shows, like the Black and White Minstrel Show. That would be banned from the airwaves these days.

As someone who has now reached my long gone grandparents’ age, I still dream of peace, democracy, and freedom from bigotry and misogyny in society. So, as the modern grandparents, maybe we should buy the young ones a white doll each, and a golliwog, for blackface, of any gender. This might be a fun way to teach children that racism is only skin deep. We are all one people. Someone has to teach children bigotry, let it not be us.

We are now our grandparents’ age they once were, the gobbledy greys. How are you surviving?