Why Did Many Boomers Feel Superior To Their Parents

The other day when I was checking my Facebook feed, I came across a post from a long-time friend and colleague. It was an amusing post about coffee.  He is a coffee connoisseur to say the least. Me on the other hand. I stopped consuming coffee when Ronald Regan was our president. He posted a tongue in check post using all the coffee house slang strung together in a single sentence that might confuse anyone not of our world. I commented of course that I would probably ask for a Folgers in a Styrofoam cup.

Well let me preface that with some background information. We used to work in the same office. One day my friend was talking about his aging fathers visit to a local Starbucks. As the story was told, the elderly gentleman ordered a Folgers. My friend was in total disbelief with a ting of embarrassment. For me it was a moment of clarity.  The moment when several life-long questions were answered in an instant. It was like a simple medical diagnosis for a nagging ailment. It was as if a filter was removed from a darkened photograph, revealing a bright sandy beach.

I have always wondered why so many fellow Baby Boomers felt so superior to their parents. Take my Father for instance. Born in the middle of the worst pandemic since the plague in Europe. He contracted Scarlett fever as a child. When he was 10, the stock market crashed, followed by a run on the banks, causing a world-wide depression lasting over a decade. This of course fulminated into a world war leaving millions dead and 3 continents in ruble. My father enlisted in the army air corps and spent much of it flying a p38 in the Pacific and living in a tent deep in the jungle in New Guanine. Is that a reason to feel superior to them?

And when they came back, they built the most successful and powerful nation in history. Built a dominant lead in the auto industry, steel, and energy exploration. Technology and medical advances helped wipe out most of the childhood diseases that inflicted most of us. They pretty much rebuilt the world from the ashes, spit shined it and handed it to us on a silver platter. Maybe that is why we are embarrassed by them.

You know, I have always felt like I had more in common with their generation than in my own. I can remember leading up to the 1972 election, a girl in my 5^th grade class was annoyed by all the conversation about politics. My teacher, Miss Bodemiller, wagged her finger at us and said look, some day you will all be in charge. You need to know about these things. The feeling of dread after looking at the faces of the kids in my class, I still feel today. You mean that one day the grown up will no longer be in charge?