PlanetStarship Welcomes Non-Boomers!

So, I hear that my "Up the Baby Boomer" platform may seem as if I'm not welcoming the Young'uns'—perhaps even discriminating against them. For those unfamiliar with the term, Young'uns are an up and coming group of responsible, self-aware, non-slacker, non-boomerang "kids" committed to the environment, humans and animals. It is they who will carry our torch when we are gone.

Often they are the children of Baby Boomers so they already have plenty of practice with our slang, music and psychedelic stylings, and are devoted to the same causes we are because they lived through it too.

Sad fact is, many Young'uns are not the most conscious parents. Perhaps it was because of the permissive society we ourselves created to counterbalance the repression we found everywhere. Perhaps it was that radical 180 turn we took, away from our own parents' techniques. Perhaps it was the experimental methods in which we raised our own kids. Whatever it was, the Young'uns never learned how to handle all these high-maintenance kids of today.

Okay, I confess, I was a holy terror myself, and in the strangest damn environment you can imagine. As a military brat, I lived with my family in Post-War Europe where Hitler's negative energy field was still shimmering on the very near horizon. In this highly restrictive Pluto Cancer society, local children up to five years old were trotted around on torso harnesses with leashes. It's true, I swear it, I saw it. I even experienced it for about 2 minutes... once.

Here's the story. One day after this four year old had had just about enough shopping in a Heidelburg store with my dysfunctional dad, I scurried away with my Superman comic book and hid beneath a rack of shirts... for an hour or so. Once I finished reading, I strolled out and made my way over to the typewriter section. (Remember that? A line of typewriters with stools in front and pieces of paper in the rollers for testing the keys.)

I climbed onto a stool and examined the typewriter. Someone had been there before me and typed: "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country."

I was electrified. I knew that I was reading a message written especially for me. Call it a Superhero psycho-flash, whatever, but suddenly I had a vision of a man who looked like Jor-el, someone who could be a "real" father to me—not this surrogate stranger who was trying to run my world. I realized it was urgent that I come to the aid of my country and I was certain that if I pecked out my own message back to him, he would take me away from this weird existence.

My little fingers pressed each key. "Come get me, Daddy." (Yes, I could read and write at four. Peculiar, huh?)

Just then long arms circled me from behind and snatched me off the stool and into the air. "I'm not finished!" I screamed. "Let me go!"

My father was hysterical. He'd thought his little precious had been kidnapped, and he was freaked to the max. Lacking any understanding of my true nature and deficient in any and all successful parenting skills, he continued to restrain me against him, kissing and hugging me tearfully.

As for me, all I knew was that I was being kept from my task. I HAD to finish my note back to my "real dad" so we could run off to aid Krypton from certain doom. Still shrieking and struggling as only a true brat can, I told Dad and everyone for miles around, "Turn me loose! My real father is coming for me!" and I kicked him in the balls.

OOF! He hit the floor. I climbed casually back onto the stool and continued my hunt and peck typing.

Security ran from all corners of the building and grabbed my father where he lay, clutching his crotch and moaning.

I typed on.

Somewhere between Security slapping cuffs on Dad for kidnapping and them finding his military ID and my passport, I finished that note. But my real father did not come. I was crushed.

Matter of fact, as soon as Dad recovered from his hysterical breakdown he decided he'd try "controlling" me the way the German moms did their wandering offspring. Well, the Achtung routine bit him in the butt.

Like an obstinate mule, I simply sat down on the floor and refused to move. No tears, no argument, I just folded my legs like a broken chair and wouldn't budge. He realized quickly that if he was forced to drag me across the store he would quickly become an even worse spectacle—from kidnapper to abuser. So he wiped his tears away, sighed and removed my harness. He didn't say a word all the way home... but in my head, I kept hearing "uncle". And I never saw that harness again.

So it's true. I have more than a little nerve being disgruntled by the way Young'un parents have dropped the reins with their kids, pardon the pun. But c'mon! It's not like I'm asking for kids to be seen and not heard, like we were told. What especially bugs me are the little things, like table manners. At a restaurant recently, I overheard a father tell his screeching son who was banging on the table with a knife, "Let's try using our inside voice, honey."

Ooooh, did the gleam in that kid's eye and the shame on that dad's face take me back to the weird old days. So remember, guys, you are building the adults of tomorrow. Start now to help them "Wake up, Find out, Jump in!"

Funny, as a Capricorn child, I had no patience with controlling adults. As a Capricorn adult, I have no patience with ill-behaved children. As a Leo Rising, I want to do a drive-by butt-smack on all of them, kids and parents, to wake them up! And so I write.

But I digress. What I've been trying to say is: Welcome to PlanetStarship, Young'uns. Let's take the best parts of the 50s, the 60s, and the 70s with us into the now. Try to imagine yourself as a child buying a shorty Coke for a nickel, a phone call for a dime, and a pack of cigarettes for 35 cents. Ooops. Did I say cigarettes? Oh well, I told ya I was a brat.