I guess I might have known: I’m a tweener. I was born two months before Pearl Harbor-too late to fight and too soon to be a baby boomer. I’ve always been middle aged.
And I’m not the only one. When people of my age get together, we–
I say “we,” speaking loosely. That’s because people my age are not a media-recognized “we.” The only reason NEWSWEEK has taken an interest in us now is that boomers are feeling the first intimations of middle age and are wondering what it is going to be like.
We can tell them. By “we” I mean everyone of an age to have been in high school when I was-from those who were seniors when I was a freshman through those who were freshmen when I was a senior. People born from 1938 (three years after Elvis) through 1944 (two years before Clinton). We heard about hard times from our elders and about psychedelic times from our youngers. Call us the tweeners. (That’s the second time I have used that term, and the last. You’re not going to remember it anyway, because nobody remembers anything about us. And because you’re already beginning to notice a loss of short-term memory, aren’t you? Where was I?)
Here’s what we say when we get together and talk about our contributions to history: “We were the Beatles.” Also Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. And Janis Joplin. We peaked early. We were Muhammad Ali, Stokely Carmichael, Mario Savio, Huey Newton, Jane Fonda (stretching things a bit, she was born at the very end of 1937), H. Rap Brown, Joan Baez. We were role models for the boomers. And then we were Richard Pryor and Lily Tomlin: role models for “Saturday Night Live”. . .
Actually, only a few of us were the people I have just mentioned. Furthermore, few of us-unlike the boomers-had much of a chance to emulate those people. We were in puberty when rock and roll was just getting underway, so our teen-love songs tended to he about getting in trouble for making out. When John Kennedy was shot, we were already in the straight-job market, so we couldn’t throw ourselves into disillusion. While the youth culture was having Human Be-Ins, we were having babies.
In short, some of us set the mold, but hardly any of us are examples of what it molded. (And now we’re moldy, but we’ll come to that.) Boomers have been through a lot, but they’ve been through all of it (at least in the media, which is to say, for example, here) on a groove. We, on the other hand, have always been untracked.
But here’s another thing we say when we get together: we know what life was like before rock and roll: I played some ’50s hits for my children once, and they said, “What did the young people listen to?”
Before controlled substances: some years ago I had a boomer woman over. I didn’t think of her as all that much younger than I was. My college-age daughter was there, living with me for the summer. Shortly after my daughter went out somewhere, the boomer woman asked, “Does your daughter have any drugs?” (“I certainly hope not” was my reply. “Incidentally, I’m afraid I don’t either.”)
Before desegregation and the women’s movement and gay lib.
And furthermore, we know what it was like adjusting-personally and as parents-to these developments. Someone once said that, as opposed to New Yorkers in New York, he preferred talking to Texans in New York. “At least,” he said, “they’ve been two places.”
We have been two places. Often at once.
And now we are in a position to tell boomers what it is like when presidents start becoming younger than oneself. Let me say that we have been placed in this position rather prematurely. One of us could have been president: Bill Bradley, Paul Tsongas, Jerry Brown, Jesse Jackson, Phil Gramm, Lamar Alexander, Dick Gephardt, Sam Nunn, Pat Schroeder, Pat Buchanan …
But no. Bill Clinton is five years younger than I am. Hey, I voted for him, and I’m thinking Hope (there being no such town as Fingers Crossing, Ark.). But still. When he was a young blade I was a daddy. What does he know about life?
At any rate, what does he know about middle age? You know you are middle aged when:
You’re on the phone arranging to meet someone and you say, “I have brown hair . . .” and someone who lives with you laughs.
You give younger people advice and they say, sagely, “Yes, that was true for your generation.” A guess-your-age person at the fair guesses that you’re younger than you are and you can’t decide whether it’s good that you’re older than you look or not.
You realize why old people have such irregular tennis strokes and hold their heads at odd angles. Bifocals.
Does all this bring you down? I’m sorry. I’ll say about middle age: it is full of fantastic surprises. You find yourself saying, “I’m 51,” and thinking, “What? I’m what?”
You’re middle aged. But for every generation, there are consolations. Maybe no one in my age group will ever be president, but at least we can say that none of these guys who have been president lately was any of us.
