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Sixties: The Crazy Years
by Lucy Greenburg

I’ve reached my mid-60s; it’s an awkward age. I’m not quite sure where I fit. You could hardly say I’m elderly, but you couldn’t say I’m middle-aged either, unless life expectancy has suddenly soared well into the hundreds. So if I woke up one day with a mad compulsion to buy a bright red Mazda MX5 Miata it would certainly be a crisis — financially, that is — but not a mid-life crisis. I’d have to find something else to blame it on.

This in-between business means that my body is constantly and unpredictably shifting gears from downright zippy to moderately arthritic. In the morning I can barely propel myself out of my armchair because my joints are so achy and stiff. But by afternoon, you may very well find me at Target zooming down the aisles and racing around corners in back of a loaded shopping cart spurred on by a 30-percent-off sale on toaster ovens. So am I a consumer version of Dale Earnhardt or an aging Model T? I guess I’m a little of both. It’s confusing.

Here’s something about being in my mid-60s: I am thrilled by the discounts. Ten percent off on getting my gutters cleaned — just for still living! A two-for-one on fish oil supplements. A seniors-only Groupon for mani/pedis until the end of the month. Just for continuing to exist! Just for still breathing! Just for being old enough to have maybe gotten high at Woodstock!

The truth is that I’m still giddy at the thought that each month the Social Security folks deposit a check into my account. They don’t ask if I’ve been naughty or nice. They don’t insist that I account for my time or hand over receipts. The last time such a thing happened to me was ... never. Never happened. I could be spending 24 hours a day switching between the QVC shopping channel and ESPN’s World Series of Poker, and those Social Security people couldn’t care less. You could try to tell them, and they’d probably just put in their special Social Security earplugs. It’s amazing just to think about.

Most of the time I tend to forget that I’m getting old. Or rather I used to forget about it until I remembered that forgetfulness is another sign of getting old. So now I have to keep reminding myself of my advancing age just to be sure that I am not so old that I can’t remember things. It’s a fine line to walk.

After three decades on the job, I retired. That’s given me more time to sit and think, and lately I’ve been thinking about the labels given to generations, especially mine. Baby boomers? I mean, really. Did we vote on this? I certainly never asked to be a member of a group recognized mainly for causing a sharp upward blip in the population. At my age I find it confusing to be called a baby anything when I’m just about to enroll in Medicare.

Please understand that I do not underestimate the challenge of naming an entire generation. It’s difficult. Just consider Generations X and Y — two whole generations that sound as if they were named for sex chromosomes. That is hitting the bottom of the barrel as far as generation labeling goes. It makes me almost grateful for baby boomer, which at least has some nice alliteration.

What I really wonder is if there is a need to label any generation. Must we divide ourselves more than we are already divided? The fact is that we are all getting older. Getting older began for us the second we were born. We’ve been doing it all our lives and it’s as much a part of us as breathing. Whether we are boomers, Xs, Ys or millennials, we all encounter many of the same milestones of growing older with much the same joy, pride, fear and confusion. It doesn’t matter if we started several years earlier than others or several years later. Getting older just means living our lives.

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