Coprolite Newsletter, March 2007

You hear an awful lot these days about the "sandwich generation." They’re the people who find themselves trying to take care of not only their kids but also their parents or grandparents.

One of the reasons you hear about this so much now is that parents and grandparents are living longer. Thus they’re more likely to get to the stage where they need some help. The other reason you hear about it so much is that Baby Boomers are currently the ones who find themselves in the middle of the sandwich.

Because of their sheer numbers, whatever has happened to the Baby Boomers at any stage of their lives has blossomed into a really big deal.

When they started school, the educational system we’d always had was suddenly inadequate. The nation started a frenzy of school construction, followed by all sorts of experiments in new teaching methods.

Young people had always experienced their hormones acting up at a certain age, but the Boomers felt they had discovered something altogether new, and dubbed it the "Sexual Revolution."

All through history, adults have worked for a living and pursued material success. But the Boomers plunged into it like another new discovery, and developed the competitive "Me Generation." Possessions became highly important. If you couldn’t afford some expensive toy, why you just needed to apply another new slogan: "Think outside the box." Outside-the-box thinking means that there are really no limits—not as long as you have credit cards.

Middle-aged people have always felt a little frustrated, but when the Boomers hit that stage it was amplified with a new name: "Mid-Life Crisis."

And so now the Boomers find themselves, bless their hearts, worrying about family members both younger and older than themselves. Thus we have their newest term, the "Sandwich Generation." Well, like all the other Boomers’ discoveries, people have lived through this one before too. We just lacked their wonderful ability to come up with a catchy name for it.

My wife Mickey and I spent quite a few years in the middle of that sandwich. Her mother, who suffered from emphysema, lived with us the last two years of her life. We still had some of our kids at home, so it was definitely a sandwich situation. It wasn’t entirely easy to get used to that new layer of responsibility. For example, Mickey would take her mother to the shopping mall in a wheelchair. Out of force of habit, when she wanted to pause and look at something, she would keep rocking the wheelchair forward and back. That technique had always worked very well for keeping a toddler in a stroller from getting too impatient. Her mother recognized the maneuver and laughingly pointed out, "You don’t really need to do that for ME, you know."

More recently, my own mother and dad lived with us for over a decade. Our six kids were out on their own by then, but you never really get to stop worrying about them. So we were still in the middle of the sandwich.

Now, we’re the family’s oldest generation. I still like to think of myself as that essential ingredient in the middle of the sandwich. Maybe a lean hunk of beef. Or I’ve sometimes been described as sort of a hot dog. Heck, I’d even settle for being a savory mound of chopped liver. But instead, it seems like I’ve somehow turned into that slice of bread on top.

I’m not sure just when that happened. But the other day, when we had a big snowstorm, our daughter called. She forbade me to go out and run the snow blower myself. She and our son-in-law came over that night to take care of our driveway.

Okay, I’m a little dismayed at this apparent demotion. Still, I have to admit that being the slice of bread on top does have some comforts. The word "loaf" is beginning to take on a whole new meaning. It no longer implies a lack of ambition. For a slice of bread like me, it speaks about my heritage, my purpose in life. Thanks, kids.

Let’s see, should I aspire to be whole wheat, baguette, or pumpernickel?

––Wayne Adams
wayne@coprolites.com

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