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#MeToo, abortion, Baby Boomers, Dirty Dancing, Gen X, generations, humor, millennials

Message from Max Kellerman to all his Baby Boomer customers.

It was the summer of 2024 when we put Baby back in the corner and it didn’t occur to anyone to mind. That was when we had to admit that Baby Boomers as a generation had failed. That was when Roe v Wade was shot down, when lawyers for the former president of the United States argued that he was immune to prosecution for [fill in the blank with anything from treason to assassination to whatever he’s on trial for in the courtroom du jour], and “Me Too” Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction was overturned on the technicality of having too many victims.

We at Kellerman’s would like to take a few minutes to reminisce with any Baby Boomer who’s having a good enough day to actually remember 1963, the summer Dr. Jake Houseman and his family spent three weeks here. Sure, I know that between Woodstock, the Seventies, and the fact that while most of you can remember your 7th grade locker combination and your first landline phone number, you have forgotten the names of most nouns and increasingly refer to everything as “thingy”.

I admit I was worried about the Housemans that summer. Jake came to play cards, drink Scotch, and look like he was about to display the more unpleasant symptoms of acute food poisoning. His wife sailed through her days with a serenity that practically screamed “husband with a prescription pad.”

But it was his two daughters who really had me concerned. They seemed determined to lose their virginity that summer, causing me to spend many a sleepless night worrying one of them would end up with someone from a different socio-economic and/or racial profile, or even everyone’s worst nightmare — uncircumcised.

Jake and I continued to keep in touch after that summer until he died of terminal pains in the butt a few years later. I heard that Frances (née Baby) never made it to the Peace Corps. So when I ran into her at Jake’s funeral, I asked if she was still with Johnny.

And Frances/Baby Houseman said:

Are you nuts? Who ends up with the boy who popped their cherry in high school? Even if he did teach me some great dance moves. No, I started college as planned, but a few weeks in I switched majors to journalism. Then it was 1968 and Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. I went to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention protests, an arrest record, and law school. Since I wasn’t the president of the United States, I had to handle the arrests the old-fashioned way, by getting my parents to post bail and hire an excellent lawyer.

But I lost touch with Johnny. Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet yet, so we would have had to write letters and I’m not sure Johnny could do that. I think I ran into him at Woodstock in ’69, and I always thought my oldest, Indigo Saffron Houseman, reminded me of Johnny. But it was Woodstock, you know. My memories of that week are still pretty hazy, so mostly I just remember a guy with an awesome mullet. I heard from his cousin Billy that Johnny was heading out to Hollywood to try the movies, something about a ghost? But I was busy saving the world for my fellow women.

By 1973 when abortion was legalized, I figured my work was done. We women had the Pill, the Civil Rights Act, and the promise of the Equal Rights Amendment. So I gave up my law practice and went back to Berkeley for a PhD in women’s studies because my generation of women was supposed to Have It All. While I was working on tenure at Stanford, I had Eden Aurora Houseman, and Jasper Caspian Houseman. A few more years went by before I celebrated getting tenure and ended up with Morgana Luminix Houseman as well. It was the eighties and nineties and I was busy saving the world, so my kids were a free-range, semi-feral pack roaming the mean streets of Palo Alto on their Big Wheels (on days they didn’t have Hebrew School). As far as I could tell, they grew to adulthood on Cheerios and McDonald’s fries, but they’re all still breathing and they can cook so job done.

Lately, they’ve been asking me to help them buy houses and pay off their student loans. I asked the other women on the Stanford Faculty for advice. They suggested I change the locks on my house and tell the kids it will build character if they pay for their own house in Palo Alto (median house prices $3.4 million) and finish paying off their college loans the old-fashioned way: by giving up avocado toast, microbrew beers, and other luxuries such as food and a roof over their heads.

My sister Lisa married Johnny’s cousin, Billy Kostecki, and they made a fortune in 3D-printed orthopaedic shoe inserts. They had 2.4 kids, a house in Connecticut with a white picket fence, and so much botox neither of them has had a facial expression in over a decade. Lisa thinks AI is actually a guy named Al, and votes Republican because Donald Trump’s kids love him and he probably doesn’t have to use bribery or blackmail to get them to visit on national holidays.

Please join Baby in mourning the demise of the Baby Boomers.

Now that everything my generation of women worked toward has been cancelled and I’m back in the corner, I have to agree with Max that it’s time to plan a funeral for the Baby Boomer generation. I’ve done a little research, and here’s what I’ve found out about funerals. if you haven’t already planned your own Celebration of Life, be aware that it will most probably be handled by someone from a much younger generation. They will order everything off the first website that offers online purchases and decide that what you really would have wanted is a fun party with everyone dressed in Hawaiian shirts (including the guest of honor). Decor will include a coffin-top bouquet that will be tossed into the crowd with an announcement to whoever catches it that “You’re next.”

Gen X probably won’t show up and even if they did, nobody would notice them. I’m guessing they will just quietly go out and die under a bush where they won’t bother anyone.

But Millenials will line up to drive the nails into the Baby Boomers’ coffin. At least until they find out that grandparents Bubbe and Zayde left their generational wealth transfer to the first heirs who can read the pages of their will written in cursive, and follow the folded road map to find where the life savings are buried. Any ties will be broken by the first heir who can tie their own shoes.

Meanwhile, Max Kellerman’s sleazy grandson Neil will update Kellerman’s by offering pachinga lessons, lymphatic drainage facial massages, and pickle ball. You’ll have the time of your life.