One day in the blessedly not-too-distant future, the single greatest event in modern history will occur. The baby boom generation will go boom. Finally, we will die off, and there will be a great cosmic sigh of relief.
The pig-in-the-python generation that has noisily demanded to be the center of attention since conception will work its way through the valley of the shadow of the python.But not, unfortunately, before we put the nation through a scream of pain as we Metamorphose and Metamucil into whiny geriatrics. As if we would go gently, without another one of our social and cultural revolutions. We have always been the richest, most self-satisfied, freest generation in the history of the world, and all we could do was complain - even before a single arch had fallen.
Once, our self-obsession had a certain vitality and could be mistaken for useful energy. But from revolution to consumption, from hippie to Nike, sit-ins to skim lattes, cocaine to Rogaine - boomers have grown tiresome.
Contrary to what our famous late-night cultural expression claimed, we never believed, not for a minute, that we were not ready for prime time. The group that acted as though it had discovered everything it experienced - youth, love, sex, parenthood - has now discovered heartburn. And no hearts burned until our hearts burned.
The inner child is transmogrifying into the inner AARP member. Modern Maturity is taking the place of Rolling Stone. (We can no longer be quite so blithe about stones.)
Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll? Dropping acid has become dropping antacid.
"The drugs are Zantac and Tagamet, and the rock 'n' roll is oldies," says Bob Greene, the Chicago Tribune columnist who's writing a book on the foibles, feelings and fears of turning 50. "Now you perk up at the dinner table if someone finds out the name of a good podiatrist or dermatologist."
Ronald McDonald is playing golf, and magazines and TV are saturated with ads for vitamin supplements, pills and ointments designed to allow this relentlessly marketed cohort to think it can beat back the aging process. (One ad hawks a stainless-steel tongue scraper to eliminate embarrassing mouth odors.)
Not even rock 'n' roll was sacred. The greatest moments in the history of the art form turned out to be jingles in search of products. Ringo Starr hawks for Pizza Hut. Janis Joplin's satire about Mercedes-Benz is now a car commercial. The Stones sing for software.
As Bob Garfield of Advertising Age magazine told The L.A. Times: "I can actually envision Jimi Hendrix being invoked to sell Arthritis Pain Formula."
As the 76 million boomers start hitting 50 this year at the rate of one every 71/2 seconds, there's a cascade of products promising that you can keep your hair and sexual potency and banish your wrinkles and gut, that you can enjoy chicken Marsala without gas and beat your teenage son in basketball.
Marketers gently refer to "midyouth," but the middle-aged obsessions are obvious: plastic surgery, menopause, prostate, abdominals, fiber, gingivitis.
An ad for the SunAmerica investment company ominously warns: "You think you have all the time in the world and then one day you wake up and you're older. You're getting closer to retirement every day."
An ad for Ortho features a woman complaining, "Why is it that wrinkles are supposedly distinguished on men and on women they're not?" and inviting the terminally gullible to dial 1-800-5NO-MAKEUP.
It's depressing. But luckily there are products for that, too.
"You start looking at the television set and realize that you're paying attention to the commercial about denture adhesive," Greene says. "They're releasing new pain relievers with the same regularity that they used to release British invasion records.
"What I'm sensing is that we're learning to accept some stuff about aging with a shared, sardonic smile," he says, rather sanguinely, given how determined boomers have been to control their environment and turn back the clock.
"Once we had the James Bond theory that fun was a big, juicy steak and cigars and vodka and a beautiful woman and lying in the sun. But now, the fact is, the fruit plate looks good. Instead of being depressed about it, we should say chin up, or chins up."
Do you believe it? Boomers are going to die. Death, be not proud.