Thursday, January 19, 2006

All flesh is grass . . .

Boy, what a treat today. Spot picked up the B section of the Star Tribune this morning and read the headline for Katie’s column: 'Act your age' will be big challenge facing baby boomers. Spot knew it would be vintage Katie. Katie has criticized people and groups of people before, but this is the first time that Katie has brought the indictment of an entire generation. Here’s the opening graf:
The year 2006 is upon us. That means that the baby boom generation, which embraced the battle cry "Don't trust anyone over 30," is turning twice that age, the dreaded 6-0.

Katie then admits to us that she too is a boomer. But Spotty bets that Katie never said Don’t trust anyone over thirty. Katie has had the sensibilities of a person over thirty – nay fifty – all her life. Katie is, rather was, a born scold. She has been alienated from her fellow boomers all her life, and now she’s looking for revenge:
We paunchy boomers may not wish to be Mick Jagger or Bruce Springsteen. But we yearn for the adolescent stage of life they reenact: free of responsibilities, focused on pleasure, at life's physical peak.

Well, Katie really doesn’t mean “we” baby boomers; she means “you” baby boomers. Katie has been waiting for years for her contemporaries to “catch up” and be as colorless and joyless as she is, and Katie is pissed that boomers don’t want to make the transition.

Toward the end of the column, Katie takes a trip down memory lane – a well-worn path for Katie – and reminisces about her grandmother:
A small woman, Grandmother always dressed like a grown-up, with a neat house dress and carefully coiffed gray hair. She wore her age gracefully, with quiet dignity and self-respect. My grandmother delighted in watching our fun, and often contributed to it. But by her dress and manners, she made it clear: "I like to be with you, but I do not want to be you."

Then Katie says wistfully: I can’t be my grandmother.

Katie = grandmother. Spotty says you have done an admirable job, Katie. Rest easy.

As for Spot, he has no intention of going gentle into that good night.

Tags: indicts the

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