Baby boomers, we’re aging out.
We’re retiring in record numbers, dying by the dozens.
Our voice is waning, our rebellious glow fading, our legislative muscle weakening.
Still, can we pause to recognize the historic, badass, tour de force we once were?
We were the post-World War II generation that made women’s rights, civil rights, animal rights, environmental safety and television addiction a thing.
As we tend to our sore muscles and hobble around on our canes, we need to remember we once tended to the needs of a nation in need of change. We accomplished a lot in our generational lifetime, even if we didn’t get to brag about it on Facebook.
We ushered in new technology and Title IX sports. We gave rise to the middle class and put an end to the Vietnam War. We opened doors and closed the book on spanking as a routine form of discipline. We redefined career opportunities, changed the purpose of college and set new standards for parenting, maybe letting that pendulum swing too far toward self-esteem and self-love.
Maybe our contributions weren’t all stellar but, as a group, we made a mark, had an impact. Perhaps our greatest accomplishment was simply surviving childhood. The fact that we got out alive has earned us a place in the history books.
We were the kids who routinely rode cars without seatbelts. As grandparents, we now struggle to install car seats that weigh as much as us because today safety standards demand each child ride in a steel-enforced contraption until they turn 16.
But back in the day, parents could have big families and still go places because they could cram all those kids into the backseat and get on with it.
More Top Picks Best Snow Shovels
I still remember all six of us kids tussling for space in our Ford sedan, my mother holding the baby on her lap. We’d knock each other against the doors, which were never locked, and force the weakest to ride on the hump.
Winter travel was the worst because my mom would light up a cigarette, filling the car with a cloud of godawful smoke. Any complaints of a headache or dizziness were ignored but, as sharp, resourceful baby boomers often did, we learned how to improve our situation.
The magic words were “I’m going to throw up.” With breakneck speed, the butt would be snuffed and the windows cracked.
Back in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, there were no cell phones to track a child’s every move, which was likely a good thing because there was no interest in tracking a child’s every move. In fact, how many of us were told to, “Go outside and don’t come back until dinner”?
Legitimate reasons to ban your children from the place they lived included: your mother had to wash the kitchen floor and didn’t need animals running all over it; your mother had to chat on the phone to her friend, whose kids had already been banished from the house; your mother’s favorite “story,” aka soap opera, was about to begin and she wanted to watch it in peace.
The only time parents went in search of their own children was if they were in trouble with a neighbor or they missed dinner. “I worked all day on this pot roast,” Mom would bark.
But we never got grounded because why punish the adults?
Speaking of dinner, I don’t know about your kitchen but ours had every modern convenience food: Fake butter, fake mashed potatoes, frozen dinners that tasted like salty tree bark but allowed “everyone to have a choice,” and boxes of cereal that had absolutely no nutritional value.
I have vivid memories of my brother and I gulping down three or four bowls of cereal just to outdo each other and then heading off to school, bloated, sick to our stomachs and bound for a sugar crash once we got there.
Back then, in working class circles, no one cared if you aced high school math. No one cared if you could diagram sentences. But if you landed a part-time job with benefits or overtime potential, pride spread through the neighborhood like wildfire.
I suppose most parents then just expected their kids to sustain injuries on the way to adulthood. There were no bike helmets, knee pads, child-lock doors. Many of us never even got training wheels for our bikes.
As a result, we learned how to muster courage, shake off minor scrapes and apologize to the neighbor for running through their hydrangea bushes.
We were the generation that tested fate. We didn’t know anything about sunscreen but we knew if we lathered each other in suntan oil, we would turn a lovely shade of Mercury red. Of course, it hurt like hell but that was a small price to pay to eventually get a tan.
Come Halloween, we’d grab a sack and head out as soon as we could, not returning until well after dark, dragging our 40-pound haul of sugar, much of which would be consumed that night.
No one sifted through the cache to make sure there were no blades or poisons. No one even placed a limit on the number of bars you could down before bed.
Come morning, there was no sympathy either. We were expected to own that stomach ache.
We didn’t have video games to entertain us. We were the superheroes of our own adventures, rolling down hills, jumping fences, making swords out of wrapping paper tubes.
This is not to glorify everything about those days. There were many occasions on which we could have died. Hospital records will back this up.
But we learned survival skills. And we learned resourcefulness. And we learned how, in the absence of a parent, to watch out for each other.
My older sister saved my life at least twice: once from drowning at Lake Michigan while my parents were chatting it up with friends on the beach and once when I got trapped between the entry door and the screen door of a neighbor’s house. Truth be told, I probably wouldn’t have suffocated but at age 4, I believed I would. The claustrophobia lingers.
I returned the favor when my mother learned from a neighbor kid that my younger brother was about to get “beat up” by a bully. Being the parent of the year, she sent me down there to break it up.
Needless to say, after years and years of adrenalin rushes, my nerves are kinda’ shot. Like the rest of me. But the memories of being the star on my own adventure lives on.
Sure, we look old and broken down now but there was a time when we were tough, quick-witted and, oftentimes, ingenious.
I wear my youth — er, survival of my youth — like a badge of honor.
And so should you.
More Top Picks Husqvarna Leaf Blaster 350ib
Donna Vickroy is an award-winning reporter, editor and columnist who worked for the Daily Southtown for 38 years.