(Not) My Generation

Even though I’m a man of a certain age whose daughter accuses of being an old hippie, and despite that I am counted among that great mass of American youth born between the years 1946 and 1964, I don’t consider myself a Baby Boomer.

There are any number of reasons for this, not merely that, as a matter of fact, the US birthrate began to decline in the year following my birth, 1957, so while I emerged at the crest of the boom, it was all downhill after that, at least in terms of numbers, not to mention popular music.

For instance, the Fab Four broke up before I ever bought a record album; real Baby Boomers got the Beatles and the Stones; I’m a child of the 70s; we got the Bee-Gees and Styx.

I was only 12 when Woodstock happened; I was totally grossed out by the thought (and pictures on the news) of grown-ups—you know, like 20 year-olds—dancing around naked.

I remember Kennedy’s assassination, but only because we got out of kindergarten the next day.

The Vietnam War was over before I got anywhere near draft age; in fact, I was the first year that 18 year-olds didn’t have to register for the selective service.

LSD had been illegal for years before I ever heard of it; during my deformative adolescent years, the cool kids were already emulating Fleetwood Mac rather than the Grateful Dead and doing cocaine.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when all the hippies were selling out, becoming lawyers, and getting rich, I went back to school to study philosophy.

I have never owned a Volvo.

And you’ve never seen me sporting facial hair.

The movie The Big Chill left me cold.

Dazed and Confused, on the other hand, was close; “That 70s Show,” was even more like it.

So, if I eschew the baby boomer generation, can I—at merely 4 years older than him—claim generation Obama, instead?