Have you heard about Boomer panic? Really. It’s apparently a thing. Someone coined the phrase when a Lowes hardware cashier was tagged on TikTok for getting all screechy and panicked when faced with dowels that did not have price tags.

That’s how these memes start. A baby boomer is called out for “boomer panic” which in turn becomes a condition the entire internet can jump on and voice their concurring opinion. Then the amateur psychoanalysis begins.

Here’s a direct quote from a commenter: “Boomers grew up when they had to bottle up their feelings to show their resilience. This can lead to growing anger, frustration with situations and people, chronic stress, and anxiety—all conditions that can lead to panicky, unhinged behavior.”

Another commenter opined “From conversations with my mother, they weren’t allowed to make mistakes and were harshly punished if they did.”

Holy cow! We really had it bad and we’re so effed up that we’re still paying for it today. Fear not, however, because experts (using that term loosely) advise younger generations to sympathize with boomers who are unable to regulate their emotions. Phew! I thought we were done for but apparently it’s all the fault of our parents. They never taught us how to regulate our emotions.

The irony here is that if you spend any time watching Instagram or Facebook videos posted by GenXers, Millennials or GenZers, it’s very clear that many of them (not going to generalize here) are totally clueless about how to regulate their emotions and should not be held up as proof that they had better (i.e. less effed up parenting) emotional balance.

I would put my clueless parents up against any of today’s clueless parents and we’ll see who is more emotionally well-balanced. Wait a second. It’s too late! Now I really am panicking! The amateur psychologists may be right.

Nah. This boomer panic thing isn’t really a thing. It’s just a manifestation of younger gens watching entirely too many TikTok videos and coming up with dumb conclusions. Maybe they would be better off reading the classics and analyzing why Macbeth’s mother found it so easy to manipulate him. Bet you he would be a riot buying dowels at Lowes.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. 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.

I’m coming up on my eight-year retirement anniversary. Knowing what I know now, would I do anything different?

Hard to say. What I know now isn’t any better than what I knew then. I just have more time to ruminate on it. Occasionally I wonder if I have it in me to work again. Part of me says yes. I’m certainly capable, and I wouldn’t mind putting on real clothes, but I don’t see how I could sustain my lifestyle.

Unless I have a tee time, it takes me a couple of hours to get going in the morning. I revel in the slow start. Breakfast, coffee, news, constitutionals, puzzles. Of course, it takes time to get my blood pressure back to normal after reading the paper, so there’s that.

Although I was minimally fit during my working years, I’m in way better shape now. But it’s a commitment, and I find it easier to stick with the program when I don’t have to make decisions that interfere with happy hour.

I try to get all my exercise in before lunch because … well, lunch.

Dinner is just one more meal away. It creeps up fast, and you’ve got to be ready. I like to be involved in that whole business. I suppose my husband, Dale, could go back to being the primary for meal planning, but the older he gets, the more he eats like a 10-year-old boy. The man needs supervision.

It’s true I’ve gotten a little older in eight years. Haven’t we all? It now takes a village to maintain my aesthetic standards. Facials, massages, pedicures, haircuts. While I would have benefitted from all that when I was working … looking sharp for all those high-level personal interactions … there was no time for such indulgences. In my career, they didn’t hand out prizes for most chilled.

Now I have the time, except these days I’m talking to the cat. And seriously, he’s not interested in anything I have to say. Unless I’m coated in kibble, I don’t think he cares what I look like. It’s just me and the mirror. My steady date.

Finally, there’s the problem of my inside voice. As it is with so many retirees, what used to be my inside voice is now my outside voice, and it does not always reveal my best side. However, I think it’s like toothpaste. No going back.

All in all, I don’t see how it would be possible to go back to work. Which means I will continue to focus on the simple pleasures of retirement, which is my favorite job so far.

Donna Pekar is an aging badass (for real) who lives in California and writes Retirement Confidential.

When my daughter was growing up in the 1990s there was a game called, “WouldYou Rather?” wherein the players had to explain which of two (often gross or extreme) possibilities they would choose if forced to do so. I remember listening to my daughter and her friends giggle and smirk at each other’s choices. And I observed that their choices revealed the values, biases, and expectations of those young people. They were laying it all out on the table, metaphorically speaking.

Now, as an older adult with limited time and energy, that game comes to mind as I think about how to integrate people into my life, or not. To me, the German notion of Weltanschauung, meaning your conception of the universe and human life, is reflected in the numerous things people say, do and believe. These days, whether I am first meeting or reconnecting with someone, there are some blatant red flags that serve as turning points in my decisions about potential relationships:

• If too much time is spent on talking about afflictions and illnesses (the organ recital) –If I see a lot of mental instability, particularly in the display of anger and grievance, even if it isn’t directed at me
• If I pick up on racism or homophobia. Deal breaking comments include things like, “I don’t see color,” or “That’s reverse racism,” Or “I don’t understand why gay people have to do that.”
• If there is incessant talk about being controlled by the government, or speculation about conspiracies, or fear of so-called socialism.

Moreover, as I get to know people, I am paying attention to the subtle ways they show up in word and deed regarding these four questions:

Query #1: Why are people poor? The answer to this shows how much sensitivity they have to class differences, social privilege, and economic injustice.

Query #2: What has been your experience around immigrants? This one tells me whom they “see,” and whether they are compassionate and culturally attuned.

Query #3: How much should you tip servers? I’m noticing how generous and empathetic the person is, and whether or not those who serve are demeaned or objectified.

Query #4: How would you respond if someone called you a racist? This is a test of defensiveness, introspection, and the ability to listen. (If someone were to tell me that I seem racist, I would show concern and want to know what I said or did that made me come across that way.)

I don’t pose these questions specifically to people I meet, but I am listening for the answers in their conversation and behavior. What some people call politics, I call values. At my age, I choose to be around those who share my outlook on life, people, and the greater good.

Karen Beatty lives in New York City

Am I the only baby boomer wandering around at 3:30 in the morning? I don’t think so. Apparently baby boomers are more susceptible to sleep apnea at this stage of their lives. If your blood pressure has been dropping and you’re tired all the time, or (you’ll love this one!) you stop breathing momentarily in your sleep, you should see a doctor.

Insomnia and sleep apnea occur more often as you get a bit older and heavier. Things get flabby and the parts start to loosen up – like your airways!! Yikes.

If none of these symptoms hit home, maybe you’re just as stressed out as the rest of us who are awake in the early hours. According to those who measure things, about three fourths of baby boomers surveyed say that they get less than eight hours of sleep a night, and one in six has difficulty falling asleep. You made it through crying infants and out–all-night teenagers and now this?

Just the noise of the cat puking in the living room can wake you from a sound sleep. Then as long as you’re up cleaning the floor you might as well get a glass of water. And after the water it only makes sense to go to the bathroom. Maybe then it’s a good time to plan that fantasy trip to the Greek Islands. Should you go with two or three days in London on the way to Athens? Has anyone sent you email in the middle of the night? You never know. If I’m up they could be up. It’s only midnight in LA…but they go to bed at 8 pm don’t they? You could get off the computer and go out on the sofa to watch TV. Home improvement shows are perfect for putting you to sleep. You start watching Amy the carpenter on Sweat Equity reruns and wake up twenty minutes later with drool on your chin (sorry about that Amy).

All the health gurus say you should get eight hours of sleep but what if you never slept that much? What if you’ve been getting by for years on six hours?

I’d like to help you with this problem, but I’m going back to bed.

(This is a Best of BoomSpeak post from some time around 2014)

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. 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.

“Strawberry — Naturally Flavored with Other Natural Flavors.” (Lifted from a cereal box.1) It’s hard to find a better bit of obfuscation out there, meaning Legal went above and beyond in making Marketing toe the line of provable claims.

Just what does “Naturally Flavored with Other Natural Flavors” actually mean? Does it mean natural strawberry flavor, along with other natural flavors? Does it mean the cereal is naturally flavored with other natural flavors (just not necessarily strawberry)? And why not make it more direct with “naturally flavored with natural flavors”, or even “naturally flavored”?2 Heck, a comma would end the confusion.

The ingredient list revealed not one mention of strawberry, unless it was hiding among the scientific poly-syllabic chemical names at the bottom of the listed contents. Natural flavor shows up- as just that- without further explanation.

Taste-testing revealed that not only are there no dehydrated chunks of strawberry present, the flavor is anything but strawberry-like. Maybe there was an astringent element, but that could have been the age of the soy milk3 used to accompany it.

So what might the flavor actually be? I suppose one could add a tablespoon of dirt and call it a natural flavor, but not for lubricants along the production line. Perhaps they hang a pint of strawberries over the bagging machine and hope occasional molecules of strawberry essence drift to the cereal below. It is truly a mystery. But this doesn’t have to be a single rant; there are three other such “flavors” to try.

1. We live in litigious times so I‘m hesitant to expose the maker or the cereal in question.
2. Honestly, the less ambiguous you make it, the more open you leave yourself to an irate retiree with too much unplanned time on his hands trying to generate interest in a class action.
3. Oops, I may have stumbled into another food borne controversy. If there is no actual milk in soy milk, can it still be called soy milk? See also: almond milk.

(From the Best of BoomSpeak, 2019)

Garth Fromme bears no actual malice toward the Quaker Oats Company, but he does get miffed at chicanery no matter its source. He is in his fourth life, still struggling to deal with this unnatural state called “retirement.” 

It was like watching a movie without sound. We had a window seat inside the air-conditioned restaurant. A couple sat at an outside table, slightly lower than us. It was a body-reading experience. The man, two-day beard, white, maybe mid-twenties, faced a woman, perhaps Latino, around the same age. Neither wore wedding rings. They stayed connected with each other with eye contact, body language. The guy was cooler, more constrained. The woman wriggled her feet, leaned forward, finger-played the hair alongside her face. No cell phone fiddling, people watching, blank-eyed self-absorption for either of them…a focused encounter, a serious date.

Was I being voyeuristic? Hell, my hearing aids weren’t doing the job in the noisy restaurant. I could barely hear the conversation between my wife and our two friends across the table. I grasped maybe two or three words in a sentence. I could tell the topic but not the content…just a bit better than the silent mimes outside. I was busy observing and filling in the blanks on two fronts.

I’ve made movies. The story elements are mostly non-verbal—setting, clothes, music, make-up, gestures, action. Words are important but dialogue is only one component. I saw a Japanese movie once that had only four words, titles actually – winter, spring, summer, fall and all the rest was action. A study in cinema as storytelling.

Our food finally came and our table conversation slowed down. Outside the woman and guy kept engaging. The guy, a study in non-verbal minimalism simply nodded from time to time while the woman leaned forward working subtle smiles and engaging eyes. I suddenly had the feeling that I was a fan at a soccer match where folks on the field deked, dodged and shot while us in the stands clapped and passed the popcorn.

So, in effect, I was in the middle of two silent movies absorbing gestures and facial reactions, smiles and laughter in a vacuum of dialogue. Our friends smiled and nodded gentle affirmations. The guy outside, however, never smiled while the young woman really worked the scene.

When they finally got up and left, I wondered if they had a future together; if she would continue to absorb his every word, send so much attention, so many signals, his way. It was working so far.

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/