Boomer Quotes

“Why are there so many people out here?' Boomer asked as we bobbed and weaved roughly forward.
'Christmas shopping.' I explained.
'Already? Isn't it early to returning things?'
I really had no sense of how his mind worked.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“I’m her grandmother!’ my mother repeats, now shouting. ‘I have rights. I get a say in how she lives her life!’
That’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it?
Rights.
Who has the right to dictate to family, friends and the world about how people should live, how things should work and what life means?
Boomers have expressed these rights for decades. And they’ve refused to cede authority and autonomy to the generations that follow. Even the Trailers live in the Boomers’ shadow.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“Kindness has no price. It isn’t for sale but comprises the tens, hundreds and even thousands of ways we relate to people. It’s a lesson that I don’t feel most Boomers have ever understood. For them, everything in the world has a price tag. But then, that’s what they’ve learned from their time and place in the world. Anyone and anything can be bought.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“But that’s what it’s like being a Millennial in a Boomer’s world. There’s always someone else pulling the strings.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“The more a Boomer population settles in a town, the more they attract renovation-supporting industries. The more these industries show up, the more attractive that town is to Boomers with a hunger for home improvement.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“In general, Boomers, as a generation, have sowed their crop and they must reap what they’ve planted. They are and will be admired, feared and reviled in mixed measure. They made everything about themselves, and subjugated both their parents before them, and everyone who followed them, in equal measure.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“Nigella and Porter provide meaning to their patrons. They help Boomers feel young again by offering new activities to vicariously participate in. Their helplessness is attractive to a generation that sought profit and now seeks, with some urgency, purpose at the end of their lives. Nigella and Porter are the perfect proxies. Their search for meaning can never end. The sudden obsession with hunting is just another stop on an endless journey.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“Being back in Boomertown has exposed us to an unforeseen avenue of questions from my parents’ Boomer friends.
In particular, why do Bailey and I only have one child? Also, when will we have more children? How does my daughter feel about being an only child? Do I know only children are very sad and lonely? And that only children end up spoiled, crazy and socially maladaptive?”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“Boomers with any property at all have made fortunes selling their lawns, garages, driveways and spare plots to developers who are desperate to capitalise on the property boom and the younger generations desperate for somewhere to live.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“Short-term stays are a favourite Boomer investment strategy. It’s so easy to throw up a quick demountable at the edge of a driveway and then rent it out for an exorbitant nightly rate.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“Boomer parents can have strange blind spots; they always seem ready to blame anyone but themselves or their children. I think this happens because they see their children as an extension of themselves. If they themselves are perfect, then so must their children be.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“I’d come to Boomertown to find a sanctuary. But I hadn’t realised that in doing so I’d stepped into a trap. I hadn’t lived with my parents for years and I’m realising I’d underestimated just how much they were interested in again being active in guiding my life.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“To better gain economies of scale, higher sales and lower costs, shops everywhere have ballooned into tremendous warehouses. They are staffed by young people who have less knowledge about hardware than I do, and who roam the aisles looking for places to hide from their most voracious and vicious customer; the Boomer on a mission to buy hardware.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“Do all Boomers think Millennials are riven with anxiety? Maybe we are. But maybe we’re justified in feeling that way about a lot of things. The world’s in a pretty sorry state.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“... many Boomers exert unhelpful and unhealthy levels of control over everyone around them. The Boomers’ parents, the generation that went through war, recession and global pandemic, described their own children as selfish. And in a way, it’s the most selfish act of all, to control people as if they’re chess pieces on a board and will stay where you place them.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“On both weekdays and weekends, Boomers descend on hardware stores to fill trolleys with paints, rugs, lawn ornaments, plants, light-fixtures and other gee-gaws to improve their already palatial homes. They move like predatory marauders, ready to snatch those red-hot deals off the central aisle stands.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“I’ve seen statistics that Boomers drink a great deal more than their Millennial children and that Millennial alcohol use is declining year on year. It could be because Millennials have less disposable income. Or it could be that we need all our wits about us to navigate life’s many challenges.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“My mother is genetically wired to love bargains and free things, irrespective of whether they actually save her money in the long run. There was, during my childhood, many a trip halfway across the county to use a coupon worth a few coins, likely using up more than the equivalent saving in fuel. A collection of napkins, salt, sugar, and other condiments purloined from local restaurants alway seems to fill the kitchen cupboards at home.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“Bailey, Ace and I continue to look for a place to live, and, it would seem, so is everyone else. In fact, word around Eden Perch is that a prosperous millennial woman from Boomer City has expressed interest in the scrubby lot that sits behind my parents’ home. According to my mother’s contact, the woman is not only interested in purchasing the land but also in building. With this revelation, the whole suburb is in an uproar. None of the other residents of Eden Perch want to buy the plot, but they don’t want anyone else to have it either. And now that someone else has shown interest, every objection comes crawling up to meet the challenge.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“My mother holds these markers all over town; people who owe her a favour. It might be a peek into planning documents, or preferential treatment at an up-coming retail sale, or even a private viewing of a property before it hits the market.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“All the things available at these discount stores are not just cheap, but cheaply made. They have a short lifespan and are often difficult to recycle. Which means they end up in the rubbish, part of the Boomer generation’s significant contribution to the environmental destruction of our age.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“The clever part is, his comment isn’t entirely a negation, but a gentle sowing of the seeds of doubt. That’s how some Boomers fence; little flicks of the sabre tip, thin shallow cuts.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“As we hit November, the cold weather sets in and the first few snowfalls arrive. It’s the beginning of the festive season. At least for the Boomers. In Boomer City, it always felt like everyone worked until the last week before Christmas. In Boomertown, there’s a long descent into the holiday that starts around November. I’ve heard it ends somewhere near the end of a tiddly January.
I guess it’s a side effect of having an entire town populated by people nearing or in retirement. There’s no grand yearly business calender to follow. Just the seasons which mark a different progression of festivities.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“My mother has a quiet arrangement with a contact at the local council and so she receives notice of any development applications in Eden Perch before they’re made public. A quiet wink, Boomer-to-Boomer and all that.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“I have to admit that the duo have figured out a clever approach to supporting themselves. The more they portray themselves as young and incapable, the more the Boomers around them move into place to pay for them.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“Boomers have a lot of time and money, and they like things that reflect well on themselves. A great deal of their choices are shaped by how they’re perceived by others. Recycling is the perfect storm for all these urges. Doing it completely requires time. To purchase food items in the right packages requires money. And it is a virtuous activity that they can promote. It ticks all the boxes.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“I guess possession is nine-tenths of Boomer law.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“I’m torn between my mother’s stated desire to do good, versus her demand that it must be on her own terms. And the unsettling feeling that she wishes to be celebrated for doing it.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“Dr Babbington snorts a mighty snort of derision. ‘You young people spend entirely too much time online, self-diagnosing.’ He pauses and adds with a smile, ‘You all turn up here telling me that you’ve got this or that and talking about worst-case scenarios. You need to leave medicine to the medical professionals. That’s what we’ve been trained to do.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“None of us need any new things,’ I tell my mother one more time, as we drive to the store.
My mother is leaning forward in her seat, the store spotted in the distance. She waves a hand. ‘It’s what I do.’
I try another angle. ‘It would be better for the environment if we all bought fewer things.’
‘We recycle,’ my mother says. She brightens. ‘And I’ve switched to metal straws.’
There’s nothing I can say about that.
Metal straws will save the world.”
― I.M. Millennial