My Generation

April 7, 2019

His wish didn’t come true, but I suspect that he isn’t disappointed. To be clear, a wish for one’s early passing might be reconsidered as the years go by.

“I hope I die before I get old!” was the bold proclamation of the song “My Generation”, released by the British band, The Who, in 1965. Roger Daltrey, lead singer for the band, was, like many of his contemporaries, declaring the arrival of his (and my) generation, the baby boomers. With the sixties, babies born after World War 2 came of age and the world would never be the same. The most salient expression of all that the baby boomers were, was expressed in the counter cultural movement of the hippies. Known for such tag lines as “Tune in, Turn on and Drop out” or “Love, Sex and Rock & Roll” this movement celebrated the freedom and exuberance of youth in ways that perplexed and confounded their forebearers. The term “generation gap” would be coined as a description of the tension between young and old.

I suspect that few of my age group would have realized it at the time, but in the end, the clock and the calendar would prevail over all that optimism and exuberance of the sixties. This year, 2019, marks the 50th anniversary of the end of that celebrated decade. The earliest boomers, born in 1946 are approaching their mid seventies. Most have long abandoned the idealism of their youth and are enjoying (or perhaps enduring) the fruits of aging.

The fact that I am well past my “best before date” came to me recently. In my younger years, I had always known that the really important people, those captains of business and industry, presidents and prime ministers were always older that me. The real decision makers that one reads about in books and sees on the news; were always older and much wiser that me. I knew that at some point, far in the future, whether it was me personally or my cohort, the day would arrive when our turn would come.

I guess I must not have been paying attention until the stark realization hit me a short time ago, I’m not exactly sure when. Perhaps I was watching our youthful prime minister on the news, or perhaps it was images of Silicon Valley tycoons, sporting their hipster beards and man buns but I realized that most of these people were younger than me, and in some cases not by a few years, but by decades! Huh… how did this happen? Perhaps I had been distracted, but I wasn’t anymore. The startling truth was upon me, our day in the sun had come, and gone!

In 2016, my wife, Doreen and I went to see the band, The Who, at the Saddledome in Calgary. While enjoying the concert, the irony of their wish to die young wasn’t lost on me.The surviving members of the band, Daltrey and guitarist Pete Townshend, both in their seventies, were both kitted out with hearing aids. In stark contrast to his high energy performance in his younger years, Townshend played at least half of the concert, sitting down and Daltrey’s voice occasionally strayed off key. But what was even more a symbol of the band’s fading youth was the audience. As I scanned the crowd, there didn’t appear to be a millenial in sight. Instead there was a vast sea of hoary headed boomers, enjoying the show.

The age of the audience was most salient at intermission. It is not unusual at large events for the lineup to the washrooms to extend far into the corridors. Usually this occurs most often with the women’s washrooms. I was therefore somewhat puzzled to see that the men’s line was just as long, or perhaps even longer. Standing in line, gave me time to think and as I finally turned the final corner to enter into the washroom, the reason for slow progress hit me. Without going into the clinical details, I will just remind the reader that as men age, their “waterworks” tends to slow considerably. Niagara Falls slows to a mere trickle. Each of the geriatric rock fans needed minutes, sometimes many minutes to complete the process!

And as I waited, I pondered how “Love, Sex and Rock & Roll” had come to this. But I wasn’t annoyed, just happy to be surrounded by the people that I could call “My Generation”!