Just don't call me late for dinner

There's some chat in the blogosphere about what to call Baby Boomers as we get up there in age.

We were the Hippies, and while I guess there are some of them leftover today from the 1960s I wouldn't continue to ascribe the term to those of us who replaced our tie dyes and Nehru jackets for department store ties and suit jackets.

We were the Yuppies -- the young, upwardly-mobile professionals -- of the early 1980s as we got jobs, had children and became consumers at an unprecedented rate of material consumption.

And as we are graduating to becoming Empty Nesters, as our Yuppie-bred children are leaving the house for college and jobs, and Retired, as some of leave long-term careers for that great unknown known as retirement.

But what will we become?

Tweens are tweens, teens are teens, young adults are young adults, middle age adults are middle age adults. But will older Baby Boomers accept themselves as “seniors”? How about "geezers"?

Not likely, except in the pejorative.

Even AARP wasn't comfortable being saddled with its image. It turned 50 this year. And after being known as the American Association of Retired Persons for a long time it is now known as AARP. Just AARP, an acronym that doesn't mean anything.

Rita Robison, a consumer specialist blogger in Seattle, posed the question in a recent post: "Baby boomers? Older people? Senior citizens? Elders? What would you like to be called in your middle and later years?"

Journalists are thinking about it. Having been one -- and still being one to some extent -- I can say that reporters look for language shortcuts to describe something. The current economic crisis, which is vast in its underlying causes, is simplified as being caused by "toxic home loans." So they -- we -- need a shorthand term to describe this vast generation of Baby Boomers.

I've used Boomers in my writing, though it isn't all that elegant.

According to Robison, the Journalists Exchange on Aging developed a survey on the question of what to call Baby Boomers. The results:

• Top choice – older;
• Second choice – senior, but not for people younger than 65;
• Boomers O.K. – but not baby boomers;
• Mid-life and middle aged – to describe the younger people in the age group;
• Those over 50 and people 65 and up – to describe certain age groups;
• Avoid the word "still" as in still driving, still walking, still alive;
• Avoid elderly, senior moment, geezers, and oldsters.

My vote is for elder. I can see it now: Paul the Elder.

An elder is valued for his/her wisdom and, in many cultures, holds a position of reverence and responsibility within the community.

I'm very happy with being called Dad and, when the time comes, whatever term my grandchildren apply to me as their grandfather. I know the term sonofabitch will also be applied to me on occasion in the future as it has been in the past, and that's fine too.

You see, when you're an elder, you don't get bothered by that stuff anymore.