Forever sleepy

The US's baby-boomer generation is in crisis, as you may have heard. The older members of it are turning 50, for one thing, and apparently this is coming as a great shock to them all. You'd think that five years ago, when they turned 45, they'd have seen the way things were going. But it seems not.

Their other big problem is self-loathing. The baby-boomers hate themselves for everything from their rampant consumerism to their navel-gazing self-absorption; with the predictable result that a series of boomer-bashing books have become bestsellers. So now they hate themselves even more.

Also known as the "Woodstock generation", the boomers used to have revolutionary tastes, in everything from music to revolution. Now, as one author, himself 50, told the New York Times, they're the main reason Andrea Bocelli is considered culture, rather than having the same status as "Zamfir, master of the pan flute". When soft rock became popular in the early 1970s, the author added, people thought his generation were taking a break: "In reality, we were going to sleep. We never woke up again." Another said of the boomers: "They used to think they would be young forever, and now they know they won't."

These last two quotes sum up the problem. It's unfortunate, but around the time soft rock was taking over, Bob Dylan recorded Forever Young, a soft rock song and also an anthem for impressionable boomers. Readers may remember it from Scorsese's classic 1978 "rock-umentary", The Last Waltz, in which a line-up of legendary rockers (and, for reasons never explained, Neil Diamond) joined Dylan for the chorus - "May you stay-ay-ay forever young" - already looking like the non-human cast of Jurassic Park III.

The song's sentiments and grim reality have diverged in many important respects in the intervening years. Take the following examples:

Dylan lyric: "May your hands always be busy/May your feet always be swift." Sad fact: Physical exercise for many baby-boomers consists of the digital manipulation of remote-control units, avoiding the trips to and from the television set which were such a terrible feature of their parents' lives.

Dylan lyric: "May you have a strong foundation/ When the winds of changes (ouch!) shift". Sad fact: Many boomers have underfunded their pension schemes, and were over-committed in technology shares when the Nasdaq nosedived last year. Talk about the winds of changes (ouch, again) shifting!

Dylan lyric: "May God bless and keep you always." Sad fact: It looks like he'll have to - US healthcare programmes can't afford you.

Dylan lyric: "May your song always be sung." Sad fact: Only on stations like Lite FM, and you're in danger of falling out the wrong end of their demographic any day now.

Not even the experience of Vietnam and all that has convinced the boomers of their worth. Many of them escaped service in the war, which only adds to the guilt. In fact, there was a case earlier this year in which a respected 50-something academic was forced to admit inventing a war record to impress students and interviewers. Many boomers spoke in his defence, admitting similar temptations to give themselves more interesting, especially Vietnam-related, pasts.

I'm much too young, obviously, even to guess at the feelings of the baby-boomers and why they are such sad fantasists. While they were coping with the twin problems of Vietnam and Dylan's early 1970s period, the only horrors I faced were the Christian Brothers. Although, come to think of it, many brothers had served in the foreign missions, including south-east Asia and Latin America, where they obviously trained in jungle warfare before returning home and applying the techniques to the teaching of Irish and the like.

I remember in particular the Tet Offensive of 1972, when they cracked down on smoking in school. One day, me and a buddy were pinned down behind the bike shed while the brothers closed in remorselessly. We were hoping for air support, but it never came, so we had to surrender. But they saw surrender as weakness, and it just made it worse for us afterwards.

Anyway, to get back to the point. The really shocking thing I learned about the baby-boom generation is that, according to the generally accepted demographic model, it includes people born between 1946 and - gasp! - 1964. Which means that I share the age group! I've been having trouble dealing with this fact. And maybe it explains why I invented that bit about the Christian Brothers. We didn't have the Christian Brothers where I lived; we only had the Patrician Brothers. And they were like the brothers' political wing - they only ever hit you in extreme circumstances, such as when you were asking for it. And I never smoked, either. God, I hate myself.

fmcnally@irish-times.ie