The good news is that crime is going down. No, really. It’s been going down for the last 20 years. The arrest rate has gone down a third in that time.

As you would expect, most crimes are committed by younger, more agile folks. People who can jump over fences after a burglary, or outrun police after robbing someone at an ATM. But here’s the kicker. Crime among young people is decreasing at the same time that baby boomer crime is INCREASING. For adults aged 55 and older, there has been a twenty per cent increase. One way to read that statistic is that these boomers engaged in criminal activity when they were younger, and they are still at it. What the hell? Once a crook, always a crook, as someone close to me pointed out. She also mentioned a former President.

Other than fomenting insurrection, what sort of crimes are boomers committing? Like many other age groups, the crimes fall into the 4 major categories: murder/non-negligent manslaughter, robbery, rape, and aggravated assault.

If this is starting to worry you as much as it does me, we’re not alone. Think about the Gen Z kid who’s worried that Grandpa is cooking up a jewel heist or murdering his former business partner who ratted him out to the Feds for money laundering.

We are supposed to be retiring, moving to the Sunbelt and playing shuffleboard, not murdering anyone. What happened to the Summer of Love? That was 1967 in San Francisco. Timothy Leary told the hippie crowd to “turn on, tune in, drop out.” And many did just that. Unfortunately, many others followed the path of crime and now it’s clear that they are still on that path. Politicians alone must be responsible for a large chunk of boomer crime. Insider trading, misuse of government funds, misuse of campaign funds, bribery, perjury, tax evasion – the possibilities are endless.

If you are reading this and have committed a crime lately, my plea to you is “knock it off.” You’re making boomers look bad and we’ve done a fine job doing that without you adding to our bad reputation.

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.

You can’t work at a profession all your life and not carry over some telling behavioral traits into retirement. I like to observe elder folk, like me, and try to guess their earlier career — a version of the old TV show: ‘What’s my line?’ but instead ‘What was my line?’

For example: I was in a writing group that included two retired grade schoolteachers. We were in the middle of our bi-weekly read-throughs in a library meeting room when two eight-year-old boys stuck their heads in the door. There was a pause on all sides while we stared at each other.

A kind of stand-off at the OK Corral. One of the boys drew first.

“We just want a peek.”

They both took a step into the room. As if on a silent count of, one, two, both teachers fired back, “You’ve had your peek. Now leave.” A remnant from years in the classroom?

A retired sheriff was recounting a campus ruckus he had helped calm down. Talking in a normal voice, he told of the crowd getting more and more rowdy even in the face of his auxiliary mounted posse. To demonstrate his commanding presence under stress, he then raised his chin, took a deep breath, filling his diaphragm like a national anthem singer, looked over our heads and blew us all back a step or two with his stentorian, “Stand down. Disperse. Now.” Crowd control 101 learned at the academy.

Or my mother who was describing her recipe for spaghetti and meatball sauce to a friend. Hers was not a written recipe, composed in precise measured words of ½ teaspoons and ¼ cups. No. She described with gestures: hands and fingers. A pinch of this. A shake of oregano. Lightly rolling and browning meatballs illustrated like a conductor coaxing a soft interlude in a stormy symphony. Ingredients were only part of the process.

Or my friend, sitting at our snack bar chatting. He idly reached for the silverware caddy and without thinking about it began to sort them by spoons and forks and butter knives. I was tempted to tell him to leave them in my original jumbled mess—I mean who cares—until I remembered that he was an auditor and spent his work-life sorting.

Sometimes you don’t have to ask a person what they ‘used to do.’ You can just watch.

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

It’s official. The 70s are going to be the best time of your life. Even if AARP didn’t come out with a recent survey that indicated people in their 70s were the happiest, I myself was feeling pretty darn happy, just so you know.

You can click the link for the AARP/National Geographic “Second Half of Life Study, but the bottom line is that people in their 70s are in one description, “doggedly optimistic” about their life and the future. Keep in mind, these people were interviewed post-COVID and they are still thinking positively about their lives and what’s ahead. Thirty-four percent of adults 80-plus and 27% of those in their 70s report they are “very happy,” compared to 21% of those 60 to 69, 18% of those 50 to 59 and 16% of those 40 to 49. According to the survey: 90% of respondents in their 70s said they were happy, compared with 81% in their 60s and 80% in their 40s.

Some observers have noted people in their 70s might be referred to as Generation X, for the lack of attention that they receive. It’s all about people in their 60s who are on the cusp of retirement, or people in their 80s who are beginning to face physical and cognitive limitations. You could say we’re the Rodney Dangerfield Generation, since we don’t get any respect.

How do we account for this extraordinary level of happiness? The simple, unscientific answer is that we’re boomers. Our generation is known for its sense of optimism and willingness to explore new things. These are people who flocked to San Francisco for the Summer of Love and hitchhiked to Woodstock without much more than a few dimes in their pockets. Now we are hitting the road again to see and do things we’ve not done before. As one observer put it, the seeds of being boomers in their youth are now growing into a sense of tranquility that other generations can only aspire to gain.

I congratulate you if you are 70+ and reading these words. You’ve made it, found more happiness than most, and can just focus on enjoying the years ahead. For those not yet 70 –  the best is yet to come.

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.

“Hey, honey,” my wife said as we barreled along M53, “There’s a park up ahead. Sandy Pines. We’ve never been there.”

I had. A year before I met her. 52 years ago. But I didn’t want to tell her that. To get into all that.

“Let’s stop for lunch,” she suggested. “The site says there’s a nice little waterfall near the picnic area.”

There is, I recalled. My girlfriend at the time had my mind in a cloud of cotton candy. But yes, there was…is a waterfall, still, I presume.

So, we pulled in. Lunched. Then walked the acorn strewn path to the railing overlooking the waterfall. I felt strange. Like I was cheating, perhaps because I was not sharing my side of the story, the memories running behind my eyes with each step.

Not everything was the same. There was a kind of dock or station, now, weatherproof boards, worn and warped, not plain gravel and dirt. The railings were shiny from the sunscreen forearms of a thousand visitors, not the bark covered poles from my time. I didn’t realize how much I remembered, how golden that moment had been. How painfully shortened when she dumped me on the way back to town.

So, yeah. The same but different. Changed. New boardwalk around the swampy ground near the falls. Same damp, misty, mucky smell…smells yank you back. More people. Maybe there were a lot of visitors back then. But I guess I just didn’t notice them. And I can’t remember where she lived when I picked her up. And how long we had been dating. But I did remember where I first met her at a friend’s cottage and we played king-of-the-mountain in chest-high water and I could hardly move my neck and shoulders for a week after.

So, okay, a trial run on the way to the real thing. But even at the remove of all these years, is it worth sharing those splashes in the muddle of memories with my wife? Nah. Not so much. Not that she would be jealous, or feel diminished somehow. It would just be irrelevant, too long ago or maybe just too personal. I mean, some memories should stay in the shoe box of photos in the back of the closet right behind the newer one still being filled.

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