OK Millennials

 Yes, I am a Boomer and that doesn't bother me, but it seems to bother millennials who think my generation never had any challenges and that everything was handed to us.  We didn't grow up in a Rockwell world as many would think.

First of all our entertainment was very limited.  There was a stiff guy on TV on Sunday nights that thought we needed to see a Singing Nun, and a puppet mouse and people twirling plates on the end s of sticks.  We were patient and hoped that something good would come out one day, and it finally did.  The stiff man introduced us to the Beatles.  Besides that wonderful achievement we were still mired in radio stations that played songs like, "How Much is that Doggie in the Window."

We had to buy music in the record store, or record it from the radio on our reel to reel tape recorders with the DJ stepping over the beginning and the ends of each song with their artificial voices.  We didn't have Napster or Pirate Bay.  We didn't even have tape cassettes yet.

If you had a car you were lucky if you had windows that you didn't have to roll up and down manually.  A car with air conditioning was still a miracle futuristic thing that we all dreamed of.

Later we all worried about being sent to be a capitalist sacrifice in Viet Nam.

Sadly we were the last generation that learned everything we needed to know to get a family wage job straight out of high school.  Shop classes taught us how to weld, work with wood, type set and print, type and learn office skills.  Today you need to enroll in a community college for two years to learn what they should have taught you in high school, especially in math, language and social studies. 

Generations that came after us should be thankful that we pulled back the curtains on the insidious nature of government and corporate America.  Unfortunately we didn't wield any power at the time that would have prevented people like Ronald Reagan from ruining our future.  Christ, we even still have trouble counteracting Trump.

It isn't that the Boomers took advantage of things back in our early days.  These advantages were granted and free flowing back then.  Later these advantages were reeled in by greed and it remains to be seen if the good days will ever be seen again.  People may now be too suspicious when good things come around,  Think of all the people who are suspicious of a vaccination that costs nothing out of pocket.  

We as a people can be strong in mass but the fear of the power of the masses may doom us all.