I first realized that I belonged to an exclusive club in the middle of a sermon one Sunday morning. I said, “We all remember where we were when we heard that President Kennedy had been shot.”
I saw the characteristic rightward movement of eyes that told me that people were accessing that vivid memory — in most people. But I also saw some people’s eyes glaze over — a terrifying sight for a preacher. These were people — adults!– who hadn’t been born yet, or were so young that they had no memory of that event.
At about that same time, I was helping some of the singles in our church create a fellowship. There was a debate about whether to have a 36-and-over group and a 35-and-under group, or if they could all meet together.
One of the planners shook her head and said, “You can’t play trivial pursuit with anyone under 35. ‘Who was Nikita Khrushchev?’ leaves them blank.”
If you remember where you were on November 22, 1963. If you know who Khrushchev was. If you ever wore a coonskin cap, played with a Chatty Cathy doll, know all the words to “Happy Trails to You” — We belong to the same club.
Everywhere we have gone, we have walked into new accommodations built just for us, from Kindergarten rooms to college campuses.
My former associate, a Millennial, said, “I’m already looking forward to the delapidated nursing home where I will end my journey through the dilapidated elementary school, high school, college dorm, and all the other things that were built for Boomers.”
That solicitous attention has made us a fractious club. As a generation, we senior Boomers have been incredibly selfish, self-righteous, and self-involved. The Clintons and Donald Trump are members of our club.
Interestingly, neither Biden nor Bernie are. They are the last vestiges of my parent’s generation — the “Silent Generation” — who skillfully managed the legacy of the “Greatest Generation.” Until last year, they never elected a president. And, do you notice how quiet things have been recently?
But, I digress.
I keep wondering why I work at keeping my high school classmates in my Facebook newsfeed. So many of them are scared to death of vaccines, Black Lives Matter, Antifa (which is really scary, since no one even knows what it is!) and, of course, that Democrat who is coming for your guns.
I do it because, in this Third Half of Life, I recognize that what connects me to these people is bigger and more important than all that separates us.
It’s not just that we all know where we were on Nov. 22, 1963. Or that we remember our first TV, hula hoop, or transistor radio. It’s that we have been through all this change together. We have gone from seeing little girls being escorted to school by U.S. Marshalls to Obama, from an NRA that was focused on gun safety to one focused on our right to weapons of mass destruction, from making life hell for gay classmates to congratulating them on their anniversaries.
Some have embraced these changes. Others have fought against the same ones. But we have all been through these changes together.
We have all watched our hair change color (or fall out), little kids become parents of little kids, who are on the verge of becoming parents themselves. We have moved from feeling immortal to not buying green bananas.
We don’t have a special hat, or a motto, or even a secret handshake, but we know who we are when we meet.
Frederick Buechner, b. 1926, was of my parents generation, but what he wrote a couple of decades ago about his own cohort, applies here:
As time goes by, you start picking them out in crowds. There aren’t as many of them around as there used to be. More likely than not, you don’t say anything, and neither do they, but something seems to pass between you anyhow. They have come from the same beginning. They have seen the same sights along the way. They are bound for the same end and will get there about the same time you do. There are some who by the looks of them you wouldn’t invite home for dinner on a bet, but they are your compagnons de voyage even so. You wish them well.
It is sad to think that it has taken you so many years to reach so obvious a conclusion.
from Whistling in the Dark