Since I’m a fast walker, I just love this study.
66 here, baby boomer. I didn’t know 50 would still be considred a boomer. The guys I hang with and went to school with are still surfing, hiking, practicing all kinds of creative pursuits. Those of us who are single still enjoy dating and sex. We have regular parties.
I enjoy oldies once in a while but my taste in music has always remained dynamic and changes with the times. I tend to relate music to events. I don’t like rap or punk. I got into country for a while but now that seems to be loosing something for me. I am feeling a little in limbo on my music.
Well, I’m in my 50s and had a candy-colored mohawk over the summer. I only grew it out so it would match my passport photo for an international trip. My listening interests still include punk but have expanded to include bhangra. I still read what I read in middle school, but have expanded here as well. I still recycle, and I still work for social justice. Not everyone around me does these things, but many of them do.
Demographically, the Baby Boom is defined as all of us who were born between 1946 and 1964, inclusive. Culturally, the lines are drawn somewhat differently, I gather, but that’s outside of the scope of my knowledge.
Since I’m 60, I’m right in the middle of the boom. AFAIAC, ‘classic rock’ is old people’s music nowadays, and there are certainly a lot of people listening to it. Most of my friends from HS and college stopped listening to new music at varying times during the 1970s. For me, there’s only so many times I can hear all those 40 year old songs; lately even the best of them sound tired to my ear. Give me some Decemberists or Mumford or Cage the Elephant.
And I still have lots of places I want to go, hikes I want to go on, bike rides I want to take. Parenthood, which I came to rather late, is slowing me down somewhat here, but the Firebug is 7 now, and he’s approaching the point where he can do some of this stuff with me, which I’m looking forward to. On vacation, I do put more of a value on comfortable accommodations (my 60 year old back says, no more sleeping in a sleeping bag on the ground, thankyew) and interesting places to eat than I used to, but that’s the main difference between my younger years and the present.
I don’t like parties. My musical tastes skew “old”. I am not on the leading edge of technology. Or pop culture. So by these metrics, I’m “old”.
But in other ways, I’m much younger than my age.
I imagine the same is true for most people.
I’m more Gen X then “boomer”. We inherently have a problem with “growing up”, hence the popularity of films involving Adam Sandler, Will Farrell, Vince Vaughn, or Judd Apatow.