GenXers and aging

Today GenerationXpert has a cool post about the different attitudes towards aging held by Boomers and GenXers (Millennials are still too young to even believe they are going to be old some day much less have and attitude about it). I wanted to post a comment to this post but kept running into technical difficulties. I don’t know what’s up, other than I am a bit of techno idiot.

Anyhoo… I was basically in agreement with GenerationXpert. Boomers refuse to accept that they are aging, are in fact old, turning 60, the first of their ilk collecting SS. Whereas Generation X will be less vain, more willing to own our aging. I know I will. I don’t feel like I have a problem with getting older. Of course, I don’t look my age (40) and am often mistaken for being quite a bit younger (early to mid thirties these days). When I tell people how old I am they are sometimes quite surprised and even believe that I am bs-ing them. Been that way my whole life.

But even though I may not look my age I still feel the pangs of aging, and while I wish that were not so, I don’t feel the need to rationalize, to myself and others, that I am not againg. 60 is not the new 40! It never was and never will be. It’s pathetic to try to convince yourself otherwise, but of course the Boomer’s have never had a problem with being narcisstic and pathetic, so they got that going for them.

I’ve alway maintained that Generation X will make a fairly easy transition into old age, that is if we’re ever able to retire. Hell, it’ll be like our twenties all over again, except that instead of sleeping until Noon and hanging out at Denny’s until 5 o’clock in the morning, we’ll get up at 5 a.m. and hang out at Denny’s until Noon. And we got no problem complaining about shit.

For an example of Boomer rationalizatoin as it pertains to their OLD AGE, check this post from a site called — Aaack — Small Boomer Business. I wasn’t aware that these chuckledheads did anything small. Isn’t everything they do, from business to wiping their butts, a paradigm-changing revolution or some such bullshit?

Anyhoo… the post is titled 5 Reason Why Boomers are not Seniors. Wow! A whopping 5 reasons. That’ll  really make the world stand up and take notice.

Can you believe we have to help fund these jerks’ retirement while they continue to muck things up? Son of a bitch that’s annoying!

Gen Xers fret about retirement

According to an article from Reuters, if Boomers are worrying about whether they’ll have enough money to retire, Gen Xers are fretting that they’ll never really be able to retire at all, that they’ll be working for the rest of their fucking lives.

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1135472320080414

I have doubts about the articles assertion that Gen Xers have high expectations for retirement. Real Xers seem incapable of expecting too much. If anything, we have lowered expectations. I do anyway. I can’t help but image myself a lonely old man in a bare room eating pictures of food that I’ve cut out magazines. That is if the world hasn’t been totally destroyed by nuclear war or global warming or something like that.

Hey, maybe destruction of the planet has been the Gen X retirement plan all along, foisted on use of course by Boomers. They know it is coming but they don’t really do anything about it, not in a serious way, because they know they’ll be gone before the end. This explains why they feel no need to do anything to help the next generation plan for retirment, because it would just be a waste of time anyway. The end is nigh!

I can remember this idea in the form of a defunct Sosical Security fund coming up years back, when Bill Bubba Clinton was running for his first stint in the White House. It was supposed to be a concern, but fuck all if anything was done about it. Boomers in power keep yak yak yak yaking about it but don’t do shit. Why should they? They’ll still get theirs. And by time their done, dead and gone, Gen X will be left with nothing. But of course, as stated above, it won’t matter because the world will have ended, or it will have flooded, and as such it will be more important to own a dingy then to have a substantially diversified 401k.

Am I the only one who, in his darker moments, indulges evil fantasies of a mass generational cleansings of the Boomers? I can’t be.