Could there be a more patronizing way to dismiss us? I’m talking about the OK BOOMER  meme/viral sensation that seems to be everywhere in the last few weeks. Generation Z’s response to baby boomers who don’t “get” them is OK BOOMER. They are fed up with us and anything that appears to be condescending about them or the issues that matter to them.

It’s become so prevalent that the meme has morphed into merch. One of the big sellers is a hooded sweatshirt that says “OK BOOMER – Have a terrible day.”

Where is the anger coming from? Ask a Gen Zer and they will tell you it’s about inequality, political polarization and climate change ignorance, all of which foment into anti-boomer sentiment. They are fed up and angry. Just because they have tattoos and green hair does not mean they are irrelevant, and that’s how they believe boomers make them feel.

There’s always been pushback by younger generations. Remember when boomers were the anti-war, give peace a chance generation that could not understand how irrelevant their parents were. It’s kind of like that, only with more anger and frustration.

Some teens honestly believe that boomers are actively hurting them. When boomers and those in power make choices that adversely affect Gen Z, it becomes personal. Choices such as ignoring climate change or the rising college and health care expenses come across as active dissing to teens and young adults.

To be fair, Gen Zers say they are not just angry with boomers, but they are frustrated with any older adults that are putting them or their attitudes down. If you don’t like change or understand new technology, you are a target for their hostility. So ultimately, boomer is just a state of mind.

Describing it as the digital equivalent of an eye roll, teens describe “ok boomer” as the ideal response to the way they are treated. It’s their cool way of insulting us for the way we treat them and the issues they care about.

For a generation that’s often put down as snowflakes, “ok boomer” is a passive-aggressive way to let us know they are tired of being ignored and harmed by our indifference.

So a word to the wise. Stop criticizing and marginalizing your favorite Gen Zers. Ok, boomers?

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

According to recent research by the National Restaurant Association, boomers are beginning to “age out” of the restaurant market.

Since when do baby boomers “age out” of things? How did that become a thing? Aging out. We’re too old to eat outside of our homes? I call bullshit on this one. Supposedly, there are fewer boomer patrons due to mobility issues, unwillingness to drive after dark and the availability of dining options within senior living communities. I will accept that these factors might limit a small percentage of the boomer population, especially if you bear in mind that the oldest boomers (born in 1947) would be 72 years of age now.

In any case, restaurant operators are setting their sights on younger patrons. So rather than staking a claim on our barrels of money, they would rather focus on younger patrons with less expendable income. They predict a slow and steady decline in boomer dollars (which apparently will parallel our own slow and steady physical decline?). So it’s all about Generation Z now. You know them. They were born after the year 2000 and cannot spell or write.

Okay fine. So while restaurants are infatuated with Gen Z, the research suggests that boomers have shifted their dining dollars to take-out and delivery. Too feeble to make the scene anymore, our dining choices will be limited to what a teenager can bring to the door.

I don’t like where this is going. Are restaurants just in the vanguard of a movement to keep boomers at home where they can receive all their goods and services when the doorbell rings?

How about we fight back against this restaurant trend by taking a bunch of Generation Z kids out to dinner a few nights a week? Everybody wins. The restaurants get our dollars, the Gen Z kids get a meal they could not afford, and they can show us how to reboot our iPhones. And don’t forget — they don’t mind driving at night!

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

 

Moving – gathering all your possessions, deciding which ones you really still need and relocating them and yourself to a new home – does strange things to a person. Especially a person in the – shall we say – post-youthful years. It makes you work harder than you thought you could, and it makes you spend an inordinate amount of time looking for stuff. Where did I stash that favorite jacket of mine? The book I was reading? The notes for the book I’m writing? The little rug I wanted for the bathroom? That’s not even the half of it, but you get the idea.

It also makes a deep cut into your energy level. In the midst of the move I’m currently struggling with, I decided to take an eight-week course in how to avoid falls. Why now? Well, it was available and I was, frankly, not thinking too straight at the moment I made the decision. I mention this only to tell you a small anecdote: I was so sleepy during the first class that I nodded off and almost fell out of my chair. The forward motion alerted me and just barely prevented my becoming an object lesson. And a little embarrassed.

Another result of the effort of moving: It has stalled my writing career big time. I’m now more interested in the location of a chair in the living room than in the placement of a comma. Fortunately I believe in the Navajo rug theory applied to writing: Everything has a mistake in it because nothing is perfect. This won’t carry me through a 400-word piece, and certainly will not comfort me for the length of an entire book, but it will help a little. A Navajo weaver might deliberately weave an error into her rug. In my case, I just let one of my mistakes go. And there’s always at least one that all editorial eyes have missed so it’s easy enough to make my manuscript not perfect.

But back to moving. Is there anything good in it? Absolutely. Now that I’m pretty well settled I can honestly say that, in the end, I feel stronger – both physically and mentally – than I did before I started. I can carry more books in my arms and stay awake longer. My sore hip has almost entirely disappeared. And it seems that I can think more clearly. Also more slowly, but in the end more clearly. And – get this – I lost five pounds.

Norma Libman is a journalist and lecturer who has been collecting women’s stories for more than twenty years. You can read the first chapter of her award-winning book, Lonely River Village, at NormaLibman.com.

The same week I got a disastrous haircut – almost a pixie cut with ridiculously short bangs – I was scheduled for a trip to my home state of Rhode Island for a reunion with my siblings. The irony wasn’t lost on me – my 65 year old self with hair shorn like my ten year old self (and I hated it then too), setting off to revisit the joys of childhood.

The first three of us were born between 1949 and 1953, and I was third after a sister and a brother. That got me off the hook in many ways, and allowed me to be a non-conformist throughout childhood and adolescence. The fourth sibling, our adored baby brother, came along in 1961. We are scattered like wind-blown seeds now, and our annual gathering is meant to reforge our bond. But we are opinionated, judgmental people who think we know best and most on every subject from brewing tea to family history. I steel myself each year for the ghosts of childhood our reunion stirs up -the prodding of old grievances, the reminders of each other’s weaknesses, the insistence on remaining in prescribed roles. But there are also memories of silly songs we made up on long car trips, our mother’s delicious oatmeal cookies and bland dinner casseroles, the stories our parents told us, and the things we got away with.

This year, being in Rhode Island, we had to visit second beach in Newport, where we once stood on our dad’s shoulders and jumped into the salty brine, and bodysurfed in the waves from the time we were small. We stopped on the way back to our rental house to lunch on clam cakes and New England clam chowder. Both failed to meet the expectations our memories stirred up. Same with our trip to the Newport Creamery the next day, for Awful Awfuls (a milkshake that was overly sweet) and Butter Brickle ice cream (freezer burned). We also bought some coffee milk, a staple of our childhood, and Dell’s frozen lemonade, both of which are now too sweet.

It’s true you can’t go home again to the sweet treats of childhood, but you can smell the salty sea air, feel the breeze, listen to the accents of the locals we used to live among, and tolerate, even love, each other for a few days during yet another year on earth.

Lee Stevens is from Hendersonville, NC