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Generation to Generation A Note to Baby Boomers We are not our parents. Quit acting like them. A TV commercial tries to sell us that advice – along with insurance. Mom and Dad had their ways, cringe-worthy and otherwise. We should have our own, goes the spiel. And ours should include switching to whom to pay those interminable premiums. Did my folks get insurance wrong? Do, or did, yours? What else do, or did, they mess up? Do my parents, long deceased, remain my role models? Do yours? At what point is it fair – indeed if not wise – to chart our own course? Those are questions without easy answers. Plus like me, you may be a parent yourself and even a grandparent. Retiring and growing old affords us the chance to gear down, to step back. Responsibility becomes a fourletter word. Clipping toenails was as challenging as last Wednesday got for me. Yet our commitment continues to help kids and grandkids. We hold Pollyanna-like hope that they will listen or simply pick up something. Pass downs need not be profound. Like me, my kids love most dogs more than many people. Like me, my kids live a good life in our area and believe no other pastures greener. Like me, my kids find no reason for liver and onions to exist. About none of this have I held my breath. I like to think I lead by example. Then again, I like to think I can sit out in the sun and avoid the hellacious skin cancer that killed Dad. I was my parents’ smartest child because I was their only one. No doubt those TV commercial makers would double down how generations should change with the times. Hard to argue, or is it? My generation buys shoelaces – if they still can be found – more than shoes. My generation prefers actual conversations to texts. My generation helps deliver COVID-19 vaccinations instead of shunning them. My generation still attends church, still watches network TV, still rents safe deposit boxes at the bank. My generation still holds dear baseball, still prefers doctor visits be face to face. And my generation finds it tough to give up relationships with insurance agents that are familiar faces who have come through in the clutch. Ours are not far-flung strangers on the other end of a cellphone app. In other words, my generation realizes that, ultimately, service usually matters more than price. What’s so foolish, all that impractical, about any of that? Old versus new or old versus young, we clutch to the upsides of the status quo or should die trying. Sure, my generation can be All-American cranks. We hold grudges about how much Big Macs cost and how little hearing aid batteries last. What I love most about us seniors, though, is that we love more easily than we hate. Opponents are not enemies. We give others the benefit of the doubt. We let stuff slide and head for a nap. Confrontation takes energy, after all. Love is better for the blood pressure. My parents came from way different backgrounds. Their paths crossed by divine guidance or astounding luck. They remained different people with a common love, an unbreakable bond. They deserved longer together. Nonetheless, they provided me with example after example of how to survive out there and to be decent to others along with way. Thank God I didn’t, and don’t, figure it wrong to do right by my parents’ memory. If anything, I wish I was more like them. Sorry, TV commercial people. My old-school insurance guy and I will partner on. My parents would appreciate that I still subscribe to not one but two hold-in-your-hands newspapers. They would like that I begin each possible day at the gym and end it in bed in the very house in which they raised me. They would be proud how I avoid debt about as fiercely as they did. And they would welcome that I chose decently well the lifestyle I picked up from their mistakes – no smoking, no incessant card-playing with the boys. Such is history, isn’t it? We ever learn. We often improve. We never reach perfection. We lecture those who come after. More importantly, we demonstrate. Sometimes we actually know that we demonstrate. So, do my kids, your kids, truly need schooling in how not to act like My generation still attends church, still watches network TV, still rents safe deposit boxes at the bank. My generation still holds dear baseball, still prefers doctor visits be face to face. us? Have we done them more harm than good? Here I go again with the questions. I just read a novel about a good father whose once-good daughter, college aged, has run away. The dad is beside himself, tortured by everything he ever did or said. These nightmares really happen, of course, stunned families left to grieve and to wonder. As parents and grandparents we do our best and pray that the best somehow does the trick. I check daily on my grown-up kids and their kids. When they are happy, I am happy. They usually are happy. They usually reflect their upbringing. I trust that is no coincidence. Our challenge continues as long as we do. • After 25 years, Dale Moss retired as <strong>Indiana</strong> columnist for The Courier-Journal. He now writes weekly for the News and Tribune. Dale and his wife Jean live in Jeffersonville in a house that has been in his family since the Civil War. Dale’s e- mail is dale.moss@twc.com <strong>Southern</strong> <strong>Indiana</strong> <strong>Living</strong> • <strong>July</strong>/Aug <strong>2021</strong> • 11
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