Archives for November 2024

I love the title and the concept. Boomer offspring are going and maybe have already started to navigate the avalanche of stuff that baby boomers have amassed over the years.

Do you try to separate the good stuff from the mediocre or just get a removal company to haul it all way (sound of hands clapping…well, that’s that)? If the boomers are dead and gone, the process is unsentimental (dictionary sez it’s a word). But what if we’re alive and kicking and it’s time to downsize with the help of your offspring.

Keep in mind that baby boomers were raised by parents that went through hard times (the depression, duh!) and years of uncertainty. That translates into behaviors that included saving every rubber band, balls of twine, newspapers, and much, much more. On top of having “save everything” parents, most boomers have lived in the same house for twenty years or more. Things come in the door but rarely go back out.

Organization professionals advise boomers and their children to start in the most unsentimental places. Think under the sink, in the linen closet, and down in the basement. There will be less emotional attachment there than with the china cupboard or the photo albums. And don’t even think about the bags full of photo slides that you can’t sort because no one has slide projectors anymore. [Moment of truth: After stalling for years, I finally tossed all my slides from vacations and family events. It was impossible to cull them down to those worth saving, and what would I do with them in any case.]

If you have children or do not, you would be doing everyone a big favor if you started the winnowing process on your own. Make friends with everyone down at the Goodwill store as you make your weekly deposits of furniture, clothing, appliances, books, records, tapes, CDs, and so much more. After you unload everything you can treat yourself to a used flannel shirt or silk blouse. That seems fair, doesn’t it?

Your children/executor will thank you many times over if you make their job easier. I can honestly say I have had very little donator’s remorse whilst thinning out the avalanche. Can’t remember even one time that I thought I should not have tossed/donated something. But we are having fun rummaging through what everyone else has given. The trick is not to come home with it.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. You can also visit his author page here. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.

“How can you watch all that smash and bash stuff, grampa,” my fifteen-year old granddaughter crabbed.

Hey, it was the Detroit Lions, half way through the season, finally making a comeback in the standing and very much worth following. “Because I’m a caveman,” I replied.

“Huh?”

“Yeah, you’ve seen those wall paintings in caves where some guys charge the prey and other guys come in from both sides. It’s basic strategy. Get your team on the same page working together to bring down the beast…aww, c’mon,” I moaned glaring at the TV, “that wasn’t a foul.”

“See,” Joanna allowed, “you seem like such a cool guy every time I see you. But on football Sunday you get all happy or sad depending on who wins. What’s that about?”

There was a commercial break so I decided to explain. “We all got caveman inside us. We don’t go around bashing other people…

Ha!

…most of the time. But basically, we all want to stay alive. To protect our homes and families. It’s a basic instinct.”

“So, all these guys, wearing weird colored uniforms and special armor, bash and thrash one another and that makes us feel good?

“If we win…otherwise it reminds us to stay alert and keep fighting because life is a fragile thing.”

“Really? If they’re about staying alive and gaining yards and scoring big, why do they have to look like its Halloween with all that colorful armor?”

“So you can tell one team from another. Who you are against. Who you have to beat.”

“Sounds like the evening political news.”

“Well at least this only lasts one hour and sixteen games over a short season and based on where you live, usually.”

“Hey, it sounds more like war.”

“I suppose. But it is a little more civilized than that.

“How so?”

The game was back on. “More Later. In the meantime, think about the Middle ages and Crusades and knights in shining armor and castles and jousting matches. There’s only a short window when guys are at their peak and competitive and able to protect the rest of us us who can only cheer them on. That’s where fans come in. We support our local team. We wear their colors in hats and jackets. It’s a throwback process, a survival instinct—supporting local talent in the ongoing battles of ‘them versus us.’

Speaking of survival, when’s lunch?

Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/

Oddly, when the young woman’s head
accidentally falls on my shoulder,
as she loses consciousness
in the seat beside mine,

I remember the kid in college in the sauna,
boasting about having sex with the stewardess.
(They were still called that then,
“flight attendant” not yet a job description).

It was back when they still served hot meals,
even on domestic flights.

The boy, a muscular football player,
bragged how the girl in the airline uniform
brushed his leg when she put the TV dinner
onto his fold-out tray,
rolled her eyes to the cabin in back.

“We did it standing up,” he chortled,
“banging against the wall,
her pantyhose dangling from her ankle.”

The rest of us on the sauna bench
either grunted in acknowledgment
or just nodded off in the dry heat.
Maybe he hadn’t even spoken.

I wondered if he were making it all up.

Just then the woman wakes up,
apologizes for slumping on my shoulder.

“You remind me of my grandfather,” she blushes,
a woman about half my age.

I don’t tell her what she reminded me of.

Charles Rammelkamp

What? We’re going back to the beginning of the alphabet?? I can’t keep track of who is in Gen Z and the only reason I know who millennials are is because it’s right there in the name.  Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z, and now Gen Alpha? I guess it would have helped if there were more letters after Z but so be it.

Anyway, the Alphas are those born between 2010 and 2024, the first generation to be born entirely in the 21^st century. Maybe that’s how they got the Alpha handle. They are practically born with smartphones in their hands (and can type on them with 2 thumbs) and have been in front of computer screens or tablets for their entire life. That makes them super-empowered and quite likely to lord it over us until baby boomers are just a memory.

The amount of time they have already spent online will unquestionably exceed all prior generations. This constant exposure to technology is a bit of a social experiment, in that no one knows the consequences of such intensive experience.  Experts surmise that such a concentration could reduce their attention spans and make social interaction problematic.

Oh, and remember the pandemic? So does Gen Alpha and they remember virtual learning and Zooming giving them an unprecedented close-up view of how the educational system has changed. For the better or the worse? Who knows, but Gen Alpha will find that answer. It is predicted that 1 in 2 Gen Alphas will get a university degree. Ironically, many Gen Zers are forgoing college to pursue trades such as plumber, electrician and welder. Wish I could be around to see how that works out.

It’s been said that Gen Z is using technology as “an escape,” while Gen Alpha uses technology “to live and enjoy their life.” Rather than viewing learning and gaming as two separate activities, Gen Alpha sees them as the same thing. You could say they are experiencing gamified learning.

So, our future, in the short time we have left, may ultimately be in the hands of gamers with short attention spans. What could go wrong? At least they are avid environmentalists.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. You can also visit his author page here. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.

It’s very difficult to recall a past event accurately. It’s even harder with someone who was with us in that time and place. For one thing, there is selective amnesia. As in the case of the ninety-year old man who leaned over and gave his wife a kiss. She looked up and said, “What was that other thing we used to do?” And beyond that, there is selective perception. Think travel tour when pictures are shared at a reunion. One fellow traveler has 200 shots of plants and flowers. Another has only architecture. A third has all birds.

An educational theorist describes story comprehension of children of poverty as non-linear. Instead of following and then repeating a story arc, impoverished children tend to absorb random instances of pain, joy, dismay and anger. So, the Cinderella story is about a beautiful dress and cleaning the floor and a prince and a mean sister and glass shoes. No order. Perhaps we do something similar looking back on the pages of our life story. The intense moments stand out, if only for us.

Some folks, as they age, forgets everything but their grudges. Like chunks of meat in a stew, after a time, bitterness can be so marinated with all the other ingredients that it’s hard to isolate the original beef floating in the gumbo of time and place. One of us is cosseting the peas of insult and pain while the other chews on the carrots. So little of our life-recall overlaps in the Venn diagram of our togetherness.

Grandmothers, sometimes, would soft focus in the middle of a reminiscence and remark, “That was when I was pregnant with…” And I could tell they were watching a home movie, behind their eyes. It seems we all have walk-on roles in someone else’s movie. Which makes it so difficult to reconstruct the past, to salve hurts, to make up for pain when editing scenes from our shared existence.

Just ask VFW members as they try to tell their respective stories of a particular battle. Even if they were part of the seven soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima, the personal experience of each would be unique. And talking of World War II veterans, my father-in-law refused to recount war stories. “If you were there, you would know what it was like. If you weren’t, I can’t recreate it for you.” There’s a certain honesty in all that. A realization that a moment in time, for each individual is beyond reincarnation.

Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/

Randy and I were lucky to connect before COVID forced lock-downs and remote computing jobs, so we commuted between our homes, creating our own bubble and shutting out the world. Until spring stir-craziness turned our minds outward. Then we imagined a long gray ribbon stretching miles through the countryside. Not a road – a bike trail.

I hadn’t ridden a bike in decades though an ancient Cruiser gifted to me by a friend hid in my garage because riding alone through my city neighborhood had seemed dicey. Randy was bike-less because he’d lent his ten-speed to a car-less coworker needing transportation. One day the friend and a car collided. The rider made it. The bike didn’t.

As a child and teen, I’d spent hours riding my green Schwinn “no-speed” around my suburban development. But now I no longer had the slender shape and iron legs of my younger self or the sense of balance that made for riding no-handed.

When we finally hoisted our bikes off the rack at the nearest bike trail head, we were ready for action. The ribbon of trail stretched ahead and flowed behind us. We found ourselves unwinding the years, whooping like kids as we rode side by side. Randy had been a social rider as a kid, hanging out with a pack of neighborhood boys on bikes. They’d done stunts and ridden around the city. I’d lived too far from town to get anywhere by bike, and I was a solitary rider. Randy became the biking friend I’d never had, and to him, I became “one of the guys.”

On the trail we were the old fogies, the ones riders on thin-tired racing bikes with toe-clips sped past while calling “left.” We didn’t care. We enjoyed the sunshine and the hedgerow scenery: wild bergamot and compass flowers, sparrows and wrens, territorial chipmunks darting across the trail. After a few outings we became the riders calling out “left” to walkers and skateboarders. We were hooked. Randy and I rode through summer into fall. The amber alder leaves and crimson Virginia creeper on tree trunks mimicked a child’s crayon drawings. Flocks of mallards and starlings flew south. The earthy scent of decaying leaves and wild grape raisins reminded us that our trail time would soon end. So, one Saturday we started mid-way on our customary trail. Our goal: ride to the end and buy ice cream cones at the shop Randy remembered from when his legs were young enough to pedal the entire trail both ways. We retraced his nostalgic trip, buying waffle cones on the last day the shop was open. When rain clouds chased us back, we broke our record time in what we hoped would be the first of many seasons.

Jeanne Blum Lesinski