THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 7, 1996 TAG: 9601070075
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
So now we're aging.
Even if you were born in the middle of the Baby Boom, or, like me, at the end of it - OK, OK, the lower middle - we're officially aging as of last Monday.
That's when the first of the baby boomers started turning 50, dragging the rest of us along behind them.
I hate that. I don't feel grown-up yet, much less middle-aged or graying. (Don't look too close.)
I am now the same age that I best remember my father. Now there was a grown-up for you.
He acted grown-up.
He wore a hat.
He never wore blue jeans or tennis shoes or shorts.
He worked for the same employer - Uncle Sam - his whole career. After an Army stint in World War II, he went to veterinary school on the G.I. Bill and then got a government job that he kept until retirement. He lived in the same house for nearly 40 years, within an hour of where he grew up. He carried a lunch bucket to work.
I, on the other hand, am on my fifth job a scant 15 years into my career. I'm living in my fourth state, and at my eighth address since college. My friends write my name in their address books in pencil; it's easier to change. I live half a continent from where I began.
I don't own a hat or gloves. I still wear jeans and sweatshirts like I wore in high school.
My father, a child of the Depression, never bought anything he couldn't afford. Except for a house he paid off in 15 years, he didn't buy anything he didn't have cash to cover. He bought used cars instead of new ones. Why? Because that's what he could get for his money.
I buy a new car that I spend years paying off. I have a credit card that I regularly use to spend next week's paycheck. And my house won't really be mine until I'm ready to move into a retirement home.
My father would not do these things.
That's because my father knew the value of a dollar. He never bought me a box of 64 crayons. I had the 24-count box, and once, when I was in fourth grade, the 48-count. Didn't matter the price was only a buck higher; I never got the biggest box.
Why? Because it cost more. That was all the explanation needed.
My father was not a lot different from other grown-ups of that time. Back then most people didn't buy what they couldn't afford, nor what they didn't need. They saved money. They bought things on layaway. They acted sensibly. They were discreet. They minded their own business. They ate in cafeterias instead of fast-food joints. They dressed up for church.
They were prudent.
Back then, grown-ups didn't search for their inner self. They didn't shop on Sunday or go bungee jumping on vacation. They didn't go jogging unless they were late for a bus, and they didn't listen to The Grateful Dead.
I'm not the only person who's grappling with growing up. There's a whole generation like me. The president eats fast food. People reveal their most sordid intimacies, not just over coffee, but over the airwaves. More-reserved boomers leverage their debt, get their faces lifted and go on Visa vacations in sports cars they trade in a couple of years.
And there's not a sensible hat to be found.
So I ask you: How can we get old if we don't grow up first? by CNB