Surly I Can’t Look That Old
Understanding what motivates and inspires Boomers and Gen X since 2022
“Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.”
– Chili Davis
Have you ever been guilty of looking at others your own age and thinking, surely I can’t look that old? Well….you’ll love this one.
MY NAME IS ALICE , AND I WAS SITTING IN THE WAITING ROOM FOR MY FIRST APPOINTMENT WITH A NEW DENTIST.
I NOTICED HIS DDS DIPLOMA ON THE WALL, WHICH BORE HIS FULL NAME. SUDDENLY, I REMEMBERED A TALL, HANDSOME, DARK-HAIRED BOY WITH THE SAME NAME HAD BEEN IN MY HIGH SCHOOL CLASS SOME 40-ODD YEARS AGO.
COULD HE BE THE SAME GUY THAT I HAD A SECRET CRUSH ON, WAY BACK THEN?
UPON SEEING HIM, HOWEVER, I QUICKLY DISCARDED ANY SUCH THOUGHT.
THIS BALDING, GRAY-HAIRED MAN WITH THE DEEPLY LINED FACE WAS WAY TOO OLD TO HAVE BEEN MY CLASSMATE.
AFTER HE EXAMINED MY TEETH, I ASKED HIM IF HE HAD ATTENDED MORGAN PARK HIGH SCHOOL ..
'YES. YES, I DID. I'M A MUSTANG,' HE GLEAMED WITH PRIDE.
WHEN DID YOU GRADUATE?' I ASKED.
HE ANSWERED, 'IN 1975. WHY DO YOU ASK?'
YOU WERE IN MY CLASS!', I EXCLAIMED.
HE LOOKED AT ME CLOSELY..
THEN, THAT UGLY,
OLD,
BALD,
WRINKLED FACED,
FAT-ASSED,
GRAY-HAIRED,
DECREPIT,
SON-OF-A-BITCH
ASKED,
“WHAT DID YOU TEACH”?
For older women with money, it’s yes to love but ‘I don’t’ to marriage
A new generation of women are rejecting matrimony for financial independence.
To have and to hold: for richer, for poorer. It seems like a great idea when you’re young and in love but for many older women — especially those with their own money — marriage is less compelling. Can we not put a ring on it?
The insults are getting old, people. This baby boomer defends her savvy generation
Is boomer bashing the new national pastime? Spend any time on social media and you might think so. The latest meme I witnessed was one that said, “You know if your parents are boomers if they think a text is an email” (or vice versa). Umm, excuse me. Email was ubiquitous by the mid ’90s when the oldest boomer would have been in their 50s, and texting achieved its ever-present status in the early 2000s. This means most of today’s boomers were or are still fully engaged in their careers, and I can assure you that they, make that we, know the difference between a text and an email.
The economy just handed boomers another win—the U.S. housing market nearly doubled in a decade to a record $23 trillion
The ballooning value of property in America is exacerbating the gap between the haves and have-nots. As Fannie Mae CEO Priscilla Almodovar said late last year, U.S. housing is facing a major dichotomy. “It’s a tale of two markets,” she told MarketWatch in an interview at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual conference. “Homeowners are in good shape because they probably have a lot of equity in their homes.” Meanwhile, those who aren’t yet owners are clamoring to break into an exceedingly expensive housing market with mortgage rates not seen in decades and home prices on the rise.
Aging brings new opportunities for learning
Keeping the brain active and learning new, intellectually demanding skills can have significant benefits for older people.
“New learning is especially important as we grow older,” Rachel Wu wrote in Current Directions in Psychological Science in 2019, adding: “one of the most fundamental aspects of learning is combining our existing knowledge with new information and deciding what to learn.” That’s difficult when both relevant and irrelevant information compete for attention, Wu wrote. “Determining what to learn is important because learning relevant information helps the learner achieve goals, whereas learning irrelevant information can waste time and energy.”
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