OK, Boomer: A Grown-Up's Response.

By Erica and Karen

OK, so we are Boomers. And, OK, we gave you a mixed bag. We invented the internet but let our infrastructure go to hell. We gave you Earth Day but refused to believe climate change was happening before our eyes. We fought for sex and race equality but let income inequality flourish and incarceration grow. We created the information economy but let public education atrophy and student debt burgeon. And now we get cranky when you don’t seem to appreciate what we have done for you. OK, we get it.

We were young once, and our parents thought we were ungrateful too. And worse. Marching against a war we couldn’t possibly understand was juvenile. Indulging in sex before marriage, smoking dope, wearing bell bottoms and flowers in our hair was immoral and delinquent. Our music was loud and unintelligible. We would never amount to anything.

Our response? No-one over thirty could be trusted. We wrote off our parents and their generation. They had screwed up and left us a chaotic world of Kent State and assassinations and Nixon while they sipped their martinis and listened to Frank Sinatra. They would never understand us.

Just as we had real complaints when we came on the scene, so do you. We know it is not convincing to retort that it’s not our fault, we are woke, and in any event we have all the money. And we see how hearing things like that might have generated “OK Boomer” as a rejoinder.

We may not like you laughing at us, but it is the role of every generation to poke fun at the prior one. And “OK Boomer” is pretty witty. Makes us laugh.

KK, Next Gens. You got our attention. Let’s get to work. Together.