Baby Boomer

I'm a baby boomer! I'm told that I'm at the tail end of the baby boom generation - the offspring of the greatest generation (according to Tom Broka) that has ever lived. They were great because of the difficulties and sacrifices that they made for the world in general. They rose from the depression - fought in WWII and built a thriving economy. Indeed my greatest hero's came from this generation. I've followed a similar path to most boomers. I was born in a middle class family, far larger than most of us think are possible or acceptable in today's world. I have half the children as my parents - but my house is twice as large as the one I grew up in. Each of my children have their own room, which was my privilege when my older brother moved out just before my eighteenth birthday. I remember our first television, a black and white beauty that could pick up all three available stations. The reception wasn't always clear, but it didn't seem to stop us from watching Gun Smoke, Lawrence Whelk, Andy Williams and Saturday morning cartoons. Today we have three-color televisions and who knows how many channels, for that matter how many of us really care. By the time you go through them all what ever you decided to watch is already over. If you played it smart and DVR-ed it and then you can go back and watch it without commercials, which I'm sure makes advertisers happy. These three TV's don't include the one in my son's room that is set up only to play video games or the one in the car so we can watch movies as we drive. It isn't as much "are we there yet", but instead it's we'll be there after you watch this movie and half of the next one. It takes about half the time to go long distances with the Interstate, when I was a kid we got to stop at every little town on the way. We never wore seatbelts; I don't even remember our station wagon, a Dodge with push button gears and wings on the back, even having seat belts. If it did I'm sure they were pushed under the seats so four kids could sit on the same row and maybe one on your lap - car seat what's that. I was a teenager before I even knew what it was like to see where we were gong in the car; I always had to sit in the back seat, which faced backwards. Another area that should have killed us all is that we never wore helmets as we rode our stingray bikes or roller-skated with our one-size fits all skates; just don't loose your key! I remember ordering my new Schwinn Continental ten-speed with the money I earned on my paper route. By today's standards it was a beast and weighted more than some cars. As the baby boom generation we have seen our children become the "me" or "x-generation," unaware of how great we had it without cell phones, texting or game systems. It has been said that we must remember our past to improve our future. Most of our parents didn't have much money and if they did they remembered the depression and weren't too quick to spend it. Our financial situation was exaggerated by the fact that my parents had ten kids, put a little more water in the soup.