My wife, Joelle, and I are entering the sunny uplands. We both turn eighty this spring. We’ll be OCTOGENARIANS.

There is something rounded and satisfying about the prefix “octo-”, which is more than you can say for the cramped and unbalanced “septua-”.

Did you know that Jo and I are America’s secret weapons? She was born April 1: Within days Germany surrendered. I was born June 12, and it was not two months before the Japanese capitulated! You’re welcome, America.

I’ve always thought myself to be part of the postwar Baby Boom, because Dad came home from the Army, married Mom, and nine months later I was born. That was the definition, I supposed: Kids born when their fathers came back from the war and turned their energies to procreation. 

But I was an early arriver. Dad came back in September 1944, almost a year before war’s end, having already completed two-and-a-half grueling years in the Southwest Pacific. He was out of uniform, and I was at large in the world, before the war technically ended. But the arbiters of generations, whoever they are, seem to date the Baby Boom from V-J Day. 

To my all-conquering spouse, this is no obstacle. She reasons that since we were both born too soon to be Boomers, we must be part of the Greatest Generation. This could be a valid point, given our respective contributions to victory, as noted three paragraphs above.

Yet, I don’t know how we can be members of our parents’ generation. It flies in the face of—how you Americans say?—logic.

My parents—and Joelle’s parents, who were several years older than they—struggled with the privations of the Great Depression and did their varied duties when the world went to war. Journalist Tom Brokaw dubbed them and their whole age cohort “the Greatest Generation.” Who could argue with that? It seems akin to lèse-majesté if we were to appropriate for ourselves this distinction that they earned honestly.

Wikipedia to the rescue! It turns out, if you go to the trouble to look it up, there is a whole generation reckoned to fall between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers. It comprises  people born between 1928 and . . . wait for it . . . 1945. At last, Gentle Reader, we have found a home. We cannot be members of the Greatest Generation; that would be our parents. Yet, we have not quite reached Boomerhood. 

We are the Silent Generation. According to Wikipedia, “The Silent Generation, also known as the Traditionalist Generation, is the Western demographic cohort following the Greatest Generation and preceding the baby boomers.” There you go. That’s us.

Time magazine said, in 1951, “The most startling fact about the younger generation is its silence. With some rare exceptions, youth is nowhere near the rostrum. By comparison with the Flaming Youth of their fathers & mothers, today’s younger generation is a still, small flame. It does not issue manifestoes, make speeches or carry posters. It has been called the ‘Silent Generation.’” 

Well, there you have it, Gracious Reader, to a tee. Even though we were among the very youngest members of the Silent Generation, neither of us ever embraced the flaming ideological adventurism of those even a few years, or months, our juniors. While people we knew, fellow-students sometimes, taunted the police, breached barricades, and provoked volleys of tear gas in the War Against the War, we were busy recoiling in—well, at least in distaste, if not in horror. We preferred silence to angry confrontation. The color selection of our wedge in the generations graphic is gray. 

“In the U.S.,” says Wikipedia, “this group includes most of those who may have fought in the Korean War and many of those who may have fought during the Vietnam War.” Well, um, yes. That’s a fact.

After us Silent People came the Baby Boomers—and we all know what a mess that turned out to be. 

The next identified generation is “Generation X.” The generation-namers could not think up a catchy title for kids born form 1965 to 1980. An unknown, they were dubbed X. It seems a slight, yet it’s the label our daughter, Katie, must endure.

Gen-Xers have also been called “the Latchkey Generation” or “the MTV generation.” If you read the full description on Wikimedia, it’s pretty clear nobody has figured them out yet. They remain a big X. If we judge by our Katie—and we might as well—Gen X-ers may be intelligent, capable, compassionate, and independent-minded people. 

Katie’s kids, Elsie and Tristan, are split between Generation Z and Generation Alpha. 

Elsie, born in 2009, is a Zoomer. It’s hard to know about Gen Z. They’re still developing. But the prevailing thought, says Wikipedia, is that they are “‘better behaved and less hedonistic’ than previous generations. They have fewer teenage pregnancies, consume less alcohol (but not necessarily other psychoactive drugs), and are more focused on school and job prospects. They are also better at delaying gratification than teens from the 1960s.” Looking at our Elsie, she seems to fit the pattern. She’s a focused, organized achiever. What a great kid!

Her brother Tristan, born in 2012,  belongs to what’s now being called “Generation Alpha.” They’re still in childhood; not much is known about them. If I were to advise the generation arbiters, based on my grandson, I would say Generation Alpha—at least some of them—could be fearless, untrammeled, intellligent, and invested with a native curiosity about life. Could be worse. A lot worse.

Of course, Dear Reader, all this is malarkey. We are individuals. 

Those who are born in certain years and thus are destined to live through particular times in history may share similar responses to the circumstances of their lives, that’s all.

We march on, irrespective of what the generation namers say.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer