People used to grow old. At least that’s how I remember it — a steady progression from the irresponsibilities of youth to the somber aspect of age.
My grandmother must have been young at one point. Yet I can hardly imagine her ever feigning interest in a discussion of Minecraft, taking a cut during a family whiffle ball game or venturing a nostalgic jaunt on the dance floor. Such things would have been deemed undignified.
Old people instead spent their time waxing on about barrels of lemonade at some distant county fair and expanding upon the faults of “kids these days.”
Behavior over time followed an orderly and expected line. While young people could take any form — Beaver Cleaver, Eddie Haskell, Baby Snooks, Maynard T. Krebs — adults conformed to a more rigid routine. They put away childish things.
Perhaps the stern ethic wrought by Puritan founders played more of a role in shaping our culture. Maybe the pressure to walk the lines drawn by family and community was greater. Or possibly it’s just a mental mirage — an impression gleaned from flawed memory. Certainly the likes of Harpo Marx never transformed into a dour authoritarian … at least on camera.
Still it does seem as if older people now act much younger.
Take Saturday night’s fundraiser for KPFZ community radio, a concert by Barry Melton’s band. As soon as the former Country Joe and the Fish guitar player launched into his first solo, dozens of greying heads streamed toward the dance floor. People in their 60s and 70s found a familiar rhythm and quickly eased back into youth.
Arms flailed, screams sliced through the music, heads bobbed to and fro. One woman of remarkable endurance wove and pirouetted and shook as if inside a cage at a go-go club or on the set at Laugh In throughout much of the two hour performance. She may have been 70 on the outside, but her 20-year-old self remained intact.
On display Saturday night was zeal, pure enthusiasm, the limitlessness of possibility associated with the teenage years. But it came naturally to the crowd.
Well, to most in the crowd. Once slumped in my chair I’m rather difficult to budge.
A few miles away in Kelseyville, a mostly older crowd secured sheets over one shoulder and donned laurels for a toga party. That’s right, the very image of anti-establishment raucousness, a challenge to mainstream morality — except that these were regular Lake County residents as members of “Animal House.”
OK—no destruction associated with the toga part, at least that I’m aware of. No, this was again older adults showing off a sense of fun, of harmless irreverence.
Scholars blame Baby Boomers and the generation that followed for many supposed ills. Boomers threatened to bankrupt social security with their numbers. They broke from the confines of education, opening the literary canon. As parents, they scored old-fashioned back-of-the-hand discipline and stripped youth sports of wins and losses, instead handing trophies to all participants.
But the very Boomers who reminded each other to never trust anyone over 30 held onto a vibrant concept of life.
Oh, knees might creak a bit and backs give way. Otherwise, 65 is the new 20.
