I am compiling a list of ways that I know I am officially of the ‘older generation’. This isn’t easy for Boomers to wrap their minds around, y’know. Especially when we are still listening to the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead. We still think we can change the world, but we’re too busy to try. We salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance with fervor, but remember the days when our contemporaries burned the flag, and we understand why they felt that way. We love all the new gadgets, but are perfectly happy without them.  We know we should dress our ‘age’, but take things from our kids’ closets, anyway. Following are other ways things have changed:

1. Nothing surprises you anymore.

2. You hear the ‘hidden’ agenda in everyone’s statements, and take nothing for granted.

3.  Everyone younger is suddenly as ‘cute as a button’.

4. Sneezing unexpectedly can be very risky.

4. You wish the sexy movie stars were your sons or grandsons.

5. You complain that actors in movies ‘don’t speak up’.

6. Car dancing can suddenly feel ridiculous.

7. You actually obey all the rules of the road.

8. You see a group of teens and cross the road.

9.  All your old jokes still work with the middle school crowd.

10. One beer gives you a hangover, and staying up later than ten or eleven o’clock is a real struggle.

11. The last ‘new’ music you remember is from the eighties or nineties.

12. You can admire someone’s amazing prowess in a sport or dance and not decide you can do that, too.

13. Watching people kiss or make love in movies just makes you think of all that hard work.

14. You use to have a ‘T’ zone or something else, and now you don’t know what the hell your skin wants.

After a some consideration, I decided to add these last-and I’m sure they won’t be the last indicators of a generational gap:

15. The commercials on the television stations you watch with the shows you remember, are all about botched surgeries, or drugs  with heinous side effects.

16. You don’t mind grabbing any available body as you walk by and need some space or support.