Senior citizen or baby boomer. Hmmm, which sounds better? For me it’s an easy choice, baby boomer wins hands down.

Imagine this, you’re sitting in a restaurant and the server approaches your table sizing you up. When they reach your table they say “would you like to see the senior menu”. Now doesn’t that make you feel old? I want to turn around and look for a little gray-haired lady. I will be honest, if I didn’t spend a large amount of money at the hairdresser every month, I would look the part of the little gray-haired lady. I refuse to become that little lady until sometime in my 70’s and when I reach that age I may push it back further.

If that same server said to you “are you eligible for the baby boomer discount” it almost makes it sound as if you have achieved something wonderful that is being rewarded with a discount. And when you think about it, we have achieved something wonderful. We made it through our childhood with no seat belts or car seats, drank water straight from the garden hose (no sissy water bottles for us), rode our bikes without helmets and our steel wheeled skateboards without helmets or knee pads. During the 60s we survived the Vietnam War, hippies, Woodstock, big flowered bellbottoms and sitting through two movies and a cartoon every time we went to the movie theatre. During the 70s we survived Watergate and the first nighttime soap opera….Dallas, left our partying high school years and rock concerts behind (go Zeppelin!) and marched forward into adulthood. Where we have happily resided ever since.

I looked up the definition of “senior citizen” and this is what I found:

• old person
• aged person
• a person of relatively advanced age
• an elderly person, especially one who is retired and living on a pension

I looked up the definition of “baby boomer” and found:

• a descriptive term for a person who was born between the years 1946 and 1964.
• a person born during a baby boom, especially the one in the United States and Canada from the mid-1940s to the early 1960s
• a person born in the years following World War II, when there was a temporary marked increase in the birth rate

I rest my case, I’ll go with baby boomer and leave “senior citizen” to the 90-year-olds!

(Unlike the famous Eisenstaedt photograph, which is protected by copyright, this Navy photograph is in the public domain as it was produced by a federal government employee on official duty and was published the day after the Eisenstaedt photo.)

I’ll be sharing this post on the lovely link parties found on my “Where I Party” page!