Baby Boomers Turn 50 (And Other Reasons To Be Cheerful)

Twenty years after they pried us out of the Vietnam quagmire, America's favorite generation is poised to transform America again. Those same wacky Baby Boomers who turned us on to the Rolling Stones, conspiracy theories and the Contract with America are about to make life interesting one last time: Now they're turning fifty.Over the next 18 years, tens of millions of Important Americans born between 1946 and 1964 will pass from youth to the big countdown to the ground. If you're one of the 8% of Americans inexplicably born at some other time, you may feel somewhat excluded, but don't fret--all the experiences of middle-class white children of uptight World War II vets are always assumed to apply to Americans of all ages and ethnic groups! You'll share in the fun automatically--without any effort whatsoever!Here are some things to look forward to in the years ahead:* A lot more people will be old. Fifty-year-old Boomer film director Martha Coolidge says, "Being old is younger than it used to be." This happy-go-lucky group will continue to be healthy, vibrant and active well into their 70s and 80s. Don't be surprised if a 75-year-old Boomer wins the Olympic decathlon in 2015. They'll look and feel great, and many will continue to work way past the traditional retirement age of 65. Then they will die. But even after they die, Boomers will remain healthy, vibrant and active.* Florida will grow to fantastic size. Demographers predict that, by the year 2006, 85% of Americans will live in Sarasota, Daytona Beach or Miami. This explosive growth will be comprised of both aging Boomers and age-disadvantaged workers (those born after '65) toiling in businesses designed to accommodate the needs of Baby Boomers. The Army Corps of Engineers is planning to convert the Everglades into landfill in order to provide for the new arrivals. The quest for space could even force state leaders to annex Georgia.* A lot fewer people will be young. As the years roll by, you'll notice a distinct absence of younger citizens, such as infants, toddlers, preschoolers, etc. In fact, even you'll be getting older. Accordingly, the infrastructure currently devoted to the young will be converted to the needs of Boomers. The Government will demolish schools and replace them with discount stock brokerages, where affluent geriatrics will gather to follow their derivatives. Playgrounds will be paved over to make way for Volvo-only parking lots, and nightclubs where techno and trip-hop once blared will play the more soothing sounds of Boomer icon Patti Smith.* Senility will become normal. Once considered pathetic and depressing, senility will go upscale as Baby Boomers change Americans' attitudes about brain rot. Road lane dividers will be repainted in random squiggly patterns to permit swerving motorists to drive legally. As forgetfulness goes mainstream, intellectual clarity will be considered gauche.* Baseball and football will die out, and millions will follow championship golf instead.* Membership in militias will skyrocket.* We'll become politicized. Traditionally, older people, having nothing else to do, have always voted in droves. By the year 2020, when 99.4% of Americans will be age 77, the American Association of Really Old People (AAROP) will use their lobbying power to stage a military coup. Young people will be rounded up and forced into slave labor camps to fund Social Security and Medicare.* Eventually, Baby Boomers will die. Adherents of New Age, the CD-based religion founded by and for Boomers, believe that a large crystal egg will descend from the astral plane to save them from death at the last possible moment. Nonetheless, biochemists predict that, like the billions of dead people before them, Boomers will eventually die. People who remain behind after the Boomers have gone will wander aimlessly through undirected, empty lives, having been deprived of the great wisdom of their departed elders.* There will be no Yoko Ono, no Renaissance Weekend, no yoga, no flat tax.Every living thing will simply fall over and quietly die. Isn't it a great time to be alive?