Bored, Tubby, Mild?
North of 50 - July 2008 “Fair Comment” column
Don Sawyer
Much has been made recently of the original baby boomers edging into retirement and gingerly testing the water on the other side of 60. So I wasn’t surprised when for my 61st birthday a friend sent me an animated cartoon featuring a couple of aging boomers lamenting their aches, sags and flabs while churning away on tread mills to the tune of Steppenwolf’s 1968 hit “Born to be Wild.” You remember: “Get your motor runnin; Head out on the highway; Lookin’ for adventure; And whatever comes our way.” Surely you recall John Kay wailing the refrain, “Like a true nature’s child; We were born, born to be wild; We can climb so high; I never want to die. Born to be wild; Born to be wild.”
We were once rebels, the cartoonist tells us, who have long since turned in our tie-dyed t-shirts for Tilley’s travel togs. Instead of looking for adventure, the aging couple sings, “Get your Motrin ready; Head out on a treadmill; The heating pad is warming; In case your herniated disk kills.” And that famous “Born to be Wild” refrain? Well, it’s now “Bored, Tubby, Mild.”
Funny? Yeah, pretty clever. But then I got to really thinking about the words. Bored, Tubby, Mild? Moi? Or the people I know? I mean what’s to be bored about? On New Year’s day I wrote down the projects I was currently working on – 14. It’s not exactly like there’s nothing to do. Saving the world from ourselves could pretty well occupy us for whatever years we have left. (I do remember asking a newly-retired acquaintance how things were going. His reply, “Winter’s been a bit slow, but golf season is coming up,” chilled me to the bone. But surely this is the exception.)
Tubby? Between badminton, walking Farley the Lapphund for an hour a day, hitting the gym three or four times a week, maintaining a world-class vegetable garden, please. Well, OK, maybe I have a barely detectable mini-paunch, but I’m working on it. And yes, it’s true I had to cut down on the bench presses when they found that iliac aneurysm, but still…
And mild? My friends and adversaries have many adjectives for me, but mild is not one of them. Probably the kindest descriptor they could all agree on would be “passionate.” But, never, ever mild.
So what’s up with this? There appears to be a kind of generational mid-life crisis going on, a malaise of the soul based on two myths: 1) geez, it’s over, and 2) we blew it. The first falsehood seems to be rooted in the media-created youth culture, a fairy tale where everyone is under 30, gorgeous and deliriously happy; never works, dresses really well, and seems to be at a never-ending party in trendy urban apartments. So when our reality crashes into this culturally imbedded myth, obviously we’re goners. Those lines on our foreheads? Not honoured badges of wisdom and experience, but of obsolescence and decline. Can only drink four beers now before falling down? Clearly a gravely wounded party animal. No fun at all. Just put us out of our misery. Actually talk about global issues knowledgeably rather than with a zingy breathlessness? Boy, you’re old. We actually read. Books even. I mean, that’s so yesterday.
And then there’s the “we blew it” syndrome. I bet I’ve read 20 articles in the last couple of years along these lines: “We had our chance. We could have remade the world. But we screwed up. We (sigh) were just too selfish.” Oh, come on. Stash the guilt, eh? I mean, to think that “we” really had a chance of turning the world into a Hair-like paradise of peace and love shows a stunningly naïve lack of understanding of the political, social and economic realities we faced. Plus, we were dumb. We did the best we could, and then we had a few other details that needed attending to, like a job, family, local community, etc.
No, I say this is the time to kick “bored, tubby, mild” back to the politicians and hucksters who want to put us out to pasture, pacify us with golf courses and cruises, and shake in their boots at the prospect of us getting reactivated, re-engaged, and becoming a political and social force to be reckoned with. As Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink recently commented on CBC, we maturing boomers have two significant pluses going for us – more time and more wisdom. The idea that social action is the exclusive dominion of the young? Nonsense, he says. That grew up in the 60’s, and simply reflected the fact that there were so damned many of us.
And there still are. We’re just older and wiser. Remember the Grey Panthers? I figure they were just ahead of their time.
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