Steve Moseley

Today’s fractured missive blatantly pirates the iconic “You might be a Redneck if …” comedy of Jeff Foxworthy. For this I make no apologies. First, he seems like a nice guy unlikely to make a fuss over the likes of me. Second, even if Jeff sues me to hell and gone, I ain’t got jack squat for him to come after anyway.

First is to certify my bonafides; the fact I was born in July 1949 sent me riding into life atop the early tsunami of Boomers (our designated era is 1946-1964) to crash down upon society. Though still only 75 years old (tee hee), I have had a palpable heartbeat for all or parts of nine separate decades. If that seems quite a long time to you, imagine how I feel about it.

Just to amuse myself in idle moments here lately, I have been jotting down a few of what must be millions of ways to surmise if this person here or that one over there is, or is not, a Baby Boomer.

For example: Do you think a guy in a plaid, button-down casual shirt and brand-new Levis 501s over penny loafers with flashing white sweat socks still looks bitchin’? Oh, oh. You could be a Baby Boomer.

If you, like me, still kinda like the look of tail fins the size of dragon wings on a baby blue ‘60 Plym you could be a Baby Boomer.

Can you remember having to get up off the floor, walk to the TV — a ponderous box aglow with the light and heat of a couple hundred tubes — to change the channel by cranking a round knob? Click, click, click. If yes, you are a card-carrying Baby Boomer.

Feel nekkid without wristwatch strapped on? Can’t leave home without it? I was afraid of that. My kids and grandkids roll their eyes and tell me they are so over watches. They smirk, point to the cellphone right there on my belt and ask, “Why not just use it instead?” Sorry, it is not the same. Why? Because I am a Baby Boomer.

Here’s one that fits me especially well. If you can make a 4-speed manual snap a big V8 through the gears, chirp the tires with each shift and not grind the tranny to shrapnel you might be a Baby Boomer. I say ‘might’ because this skill is not exclusive to our generation. For proof, I submit my two sons as exhibits A and B.

If you trudged 6 miles round trip, uphill in both directions, to school in rain, wind, blizzard, tornado or hail — sometimes all at once — you are not a Boomer. You belong to the Grandest Generation of my parents. At least that was their story.

Did you disrespect your mother and, when he got home from work, experience your dad slapping knots on your head faster than you could rub ‘em? Yeah, I figured odds were decent. So did I. Just once. Parents who parented, hard if needed to get the message across, were another staple of Baby Boomerhood.

Are you able to close your eyes and visualize one or more teenage boys lurking around the neighborhood in ducktail haircuts and black leather jackets, a cigarette perched behind one ear? Me, too.

If I call to mind cheerleaders in skirts and sweaters in school colors with black and white sadds over bobby socks leaping about at the big game, can you still conjure them behind your eye lids? That was an icon of the 60s for me and you too, I bet.

I tell ya, it just goes on and on.

If you, like my buddies and me, saw both Gary Lewis and the Playboys and the Everly Brothers live and in person at King’s Ball Room (long since burned to the ground) in tiny Shelby, Nebraska, pop. 739 in 2024, you are a Baby Boomer even if you don’t want to be.

If you try real hard, can you almost hear the high-pitched, whiny voice of Andy Devine pleading, “Hey, Wild Bill, wait for me!” over your tinnitus? Are you still not sure what an ‘app’ is? Baby Boomer symptoms both.

Of course there are ‘tells’ that reveal non-Boomers, too. They lurk everywhere.

For instance, must you have a TV squawking every waking moment to mindlessly keep you company? Perhaps even to sleep? If so, you are summarily drummed out of Boomerville. Likewise, if you ever lay the side-eye on a white panther like me and derisively mutter “Ok, Boomer” you’re disqualified.

Here’s the big test; If you, like, say like every three, like, words you are like definitely not, like, a Baby, like,

Boomer.