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ACT YOUR AGE
The boomers are getting old. And older. Would somebody please tell them?

Text: DANIEL WOOD

IF YOU'VE RECENTLY FACED - OR WILL SOON FACE - YOUR 50TH birthday, mark the following date on the calendar: September 2033. According to actuaries, that's the month when you will die. It's a bummer all right, having an expiry date. No megadoses of shark cartilage, no belated conversions to sperm-saving, life-force-retaining Tantric Buddhism, no amount of raging against the dying of the light, nothing will still the relentless tick-tock. As the countdown continues and the years fly by, the phrase "the big chill" will assume an ominous new meaning.

The genesis of all this graveyard whistling started with an unprecedented population bulge during the Boomer years, generally framed between 1946 and 1964. By sheer numbers – and to the annoyance of everyone else – the Boomers have gotten to rule the agenda for nearly half a century. And unlike their pragmatic parents, who endured the Depression and World War II, this pampered generation has experienced mostly prosperity and peace. The only traumas they’ve faced are not buying Microsoft stock early and dumping their Nortel late. Awash in the youthful embryonic fluid of purpose, these media darlings have come to believe that all things are possible. This seamless sense of destiny has so pervaded the generation that, until now, contradictions have appeared as anathema. Old age has been viewed as distant as the Age of Dinosaurs. Unlike Asian cultures, which embrace their elders, the self-centred Boomers mock them.

But the evidence is accumulating that the times they are a-changin’. Actually, for aging Boomers, time itself is becoming a four-letter word. No one wants to hear about the incremental attrition of the body’s systems. The annoying inability to recall a simple word hints at impending brain meltdown. Insomnia stinks. And incontinence isn’t funny, dammit. For most people, by age 55 or so every sensory function – even taste and smell – has diminished. Ditto strength, bone density and flexibility. Ditto sex drive. The past decade’s lethargy and fettuccine have been transformed into this year’s flab. (A recent Stats Can study shows the number of obese Boomers ballooning 40 percent in the past seven years.) Blame it on the generation’s self-indulgence. Blame it on modern medicine. As Gerald Celente reports in his book Trends 2000, Boomers will live on average to almost 81. But longevity means the generation will have many late nights to think not just of time past but of time left. After all, it was only a century ago that the average North American 50-year-old was just beginning a second career as mulch.

Whichever way the Boomers turn, the combined effects of increased longevity and relative affluence means the new gerontocracy will dominate the next 25 years as no generation of seniors has ever done before. It all goes back to numbers, as Ken Dychtwald points out in his book on early-21st-century Boomer influence, Age Power. Until the Boom peaks around 2020, more than 3.7 million North Americans a year will reach the official retirement age of 65. This will mean twice as many seniors as there are today. By then, Boomers will account for almost one-third of the continent’s entire population. Which also means that society’s tax-supported medical costs are going to go ballistic – at least until the group’s numbers start to decline in 2033.

But rising health-care costs are just the tip of the generational iceberg. The Boomer demographic sledgehammer, which worked in the 1950s for the sale of everything from Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes to Schwinn bicycles, will work in the 2010s for the sale of everything from Michelob Ultra (a low-cal beer for seniors) to $500,000 Winnebagos. And just as modern RVs are assuming the size of many Boomers’ egos, senior-friendly cruise ships are assuming the size of minor European duchies. This celebration of excess will rip through the generation’s RRSPs and then drop, Oz-like, on some gated, golf course-surrounded, Tilley-clad, munchkin community near sunny Tucson, Arizona (where the Boomer population is predicted to quadruple in the next 20 years).

Some of the most important effects brought on by the aging of Aquarians will be in the fields of ethics and religion. Issues around mandatory retirement, alternative medicine, the right to die, the medical use of marijuana and suicide (already on a dramatic increase among Boomers) are in their first years of decades of debate. What’s more, with 75 percent of North America’s Boomers saying that they believe in an afterlife and anticipate a return to a long-abandoned interest in spirituality, it’s clear that many will pursue a 12-step rapprochement with God or Buddha or Swami Yogananda. ("Hi. My name’s Dan. And I’m an atheist.")

There’s the real prospect that diehard Boomers may find immortality’s seductive call irresistible – just as those who want to relieve them of their wealth may find that desire lucrative. Science and society have, after all, served the generation well: birth-control pills accompanied their sexual arrival, estrogen patches and Viagra their sexual decline. (Martha Stewart, microwave popcorn and a couple of divorces filled the years in between.) The future promise of organ cloning, genetic manipulation and nano-technology implants may, in the nick of time, provide the generation with the illusion that they can outlive Methuselah. So during the decades ahead, there may well be Boomer graduates of plastic and prosthetic surgeries who will see themselves transformed once again, only this time via medical technology.

But, sadly, nothing can transform them into immortals. There is no Maytag Man for eternity. Although a recent survey has shown that 40 million Baby Boomers believe they will live to be 100, actuaries say more than 39 million of them are wrong. Virtually none will live, despite the blandishments of hucksters, beyond the maximum human age: 114. Most Boomers will approach the September 2033 deadline chastened, with an undeniable realization that the bill for eight or so decades of fun will soon read "Past Due."