On the Far Side of the Generation Gap

I grew up safe in the conviction that I was young.

The first time someone called me ma’am , I looked behind me. This was many years ago. I remember myself as being even younger.

So I turned, expecting to see a white-gloved matron in a jersey dress with a tiny floral print. Or Aunt Bee. Or, say, my mother .

But the little twerp (as I recall, he had pimples all over his face and a twittery Adam’s apple) was talking to ME.

Which is the trouble with these punks--and believe me, they’re everywhere--who try to pass themselves off as young: They show absolutely no respect.

I’d always been miss before. In a pinch, young lady could always make me smile, especially if I wasn’t being sent to my room.

But I’ve noticed that nobody says either to me much anymore, even when I’m not with my daughters--who are flagrantly younger than I am--or when I’m behind the wheel of my car.

Which is a station wagon.

(Hey, at least it’s not a minivan, which is what my sister owns, and my sister is even younger than I am. Chronologically speaking, that is.)

Sadly, however, what I drive is not just any station wagon, but a beige station wagon.

I hate beige. Even though it’s Cher’s favorite color, and Cher is bordering on indecorously young. But I drive a beige station wagon because the price was right. Which doesn’t sound like something that Cher would do.

It sounds like something that your parents might do. Which is the problem with not being as young as you think you are.

You switch sides, through no conscious effort on your part.

Fact is, if you tried to consciously figure out how it is that your behavior (not to mention your thighs) bears an uncanny resemblance to that of your parents, you might deduce that you were indeed unconscious during much of your extreme youth because how else can you account for all those stupid stunts that you have somehow survived?

Remember sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll?

(You do? HA! You’re even older than I am. Nana-nana-na-na .)

So anyway, no sense trying to get too deep about this age thing. It just kind of sneaks up on you, is all, like static cling.

Then, before you know it, you’re married with kids and a house and a beige station wagon, and you’re annoyed as hell at those guys at the Price Club who are already on their second free sample of the tasty frozen burrito when you haven’t even had one!

Maturity, of course, is a sure sign of lost youth.

That’s why I strive to avoid it. Maturity, I mean. Oh, and extreme youth too.

Actually, mutant youth is more like it. These are kids who look younger than I ever was. I tend to cut these curious beings a wide path.

Not that they’re that thrilled with me, either. The nicest thing that they can think to call me is ma’am .

Me, I think the Mexicans have it right. Don’t assume too much about those who arrived here first. Not if you want your tortillas hot.

To wit: We were in an outdoor restaurant in a blip of a town in central Mexico, a Mexican friend and me. This was a while back.

“ Senorita , senorita ,” my friend was saying in the direction of a waitress who was 90 years old if she was a day.

I asked who he could possibly mean.

“You don’t call her senora ,” he said, “because that assumes that she is not a virgin, which is not very nice.”

Would that such common sense could catch on here.

But no. What they call people like me, if they want to be nice, is Baby Boomer. Only now they add “aging” up front. Like everyone else has been freeze-dried.

(Remember, there is only one Dick Clark.)

Not that I’m complaining about any of this, you understand. The last thing I want is to turn the clock back.

In hell, everybody has to repeat the eighth grade.