You Talkin' to Me? A Primer on Boomer Speak
Walter Shapiro
Senior Correspondent
Posted:
10/6/09
The economic downturn has led to what seems like an unprecedented mixing of the generations in the workplace. Faster than Clark Kent can change clothes in a phone booth (an ancient, fully enclosed communications cubicle, in case you wondered), downwardly mobile baby boomers are finding themselves working for managers less than half their age. On the flip side, the decimation of middle management at most companies means that there are no Gen-Y intermediaries standing between a clueless white-haired boss (who still thinks the Eagles are a new group) and a crop of recent and under-paid college graduates.
In short, what we have here is a failure to communicate. (Psst, the line is from "Cool Hand Luke," a 1967 movie featuring now-dead actors of yesteryear like Paul Newman). Forced by fate to have daily interactions in the workplace with people actually older than their parents, members of the Millennial Generation need a guide to Boomer Speak, which they can clip and save. (Translation: The phrase "clip and save" refers to useful pieces of information that were once printed in something called newspapers and were actually cut out with scissors.) Better yet, a Boomer Speak app for the
The following list is designed to be both era-appropriate (no archaic references to "twenty-three-skidoo" or "keeping cool with Coolidge") and, in deference to the tender sensibilities of the young, devoid of all hackneyed references to Woodstock. Even if your parents inflicted on you long car drives with the Beatles' "White Album" blasting out of the car's tape player, you are probably not truly bilingual when it comes to Boomer Speak. So here is a glossary that will be your breviary when your boss tells you to look something up in the Yellow Pages or an underling complains that the company vacation policies are a "Catch-22."
Our long national nightmare is over: No, the woman in the corner office is not having acid flashbacks. The 1972-74 Watergate scandal (ignore the details, just remember the mantra, "It's not the crime but the cover-up") was crippling for Richard Nixon, but energizing for the English language. Used today, the "national nightmare" line is an ironic reference to Jerry Ford's apt observation on taking over as America's only accidental president.
We've got trouble right here in River City: The new barista, who keeps boring everybody with pictures of his grandchildren, might use this expression when he discovers that the spigot is clogged in the frappuccino machine. It is taken from the 1957 Broadway musical (and subsequent movie) "The Music Man," in which fast-talking huckster Professor Harold Hill (played by Robert Preston) warns of the dread menace of a pool hall in the River City, Iowa.
Honey, I forgot to duck: One of an impressive string of one-liners that Ronald Reagan uttered in the operating room after his near-fatal 1981 shooting. Most baby boomers forget that the Gipper borrowed the coinage from defrocked heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, who offered this explanation to his wife, actress Estelle Taylor, after he lost his crown to Gene Tunney in 1926. (By the way, Tunney's son, John, a former California senator, was supposedly the model for the vapid politician played by Robert Redford in the 1972 movie "The Candidate." But relax, this obscure detail will not be on the midterm.)
Lassie is trying to tell us something: In the 1950s TV series about a collie who was brighter than most members of Congress, the dog's sidekick, Timmy, was a boy who had an uncanny habit of falling into wells. And Lassie, rather than sending a text message, would race home to get help from slow-on-the-uptake adults.
The light at the end of the tunnel: Whether a boomer served in Southeast Asia or bravely protested on the home front, this is a generation that will never erase 'Nam from its collective memory. The Johnson administration was fond of this irrationally hopeful tunnel imagery, and Gen. William Westmoreland famously used it at a news conference just 10 weeks before the 1968 Tet offensive. This is now an expression you might hear whispered in a mocking tone during a company meeting announcing that the latest round of layoffs guarantees that boom times are ahead.
Ring around the collar: This is not an acceptable excuse for an over-the-hill Walmart greeter to leave his station and rush to the dermatologist. Instead, it refers to the near-mythical clothing problem that Wisk detergent promised to solve in a series of grating 1970s TV commercials.
We're entering the Twilight Zone: This is the moment to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a landmark TV series that from 1959-64 managed to be truly frightening while employing, at best, primitive special effects. Invoked by a member of the post-war generation,
You've come a long way, baby: These days, this provocative line can only be used with a heavy-handed tone of mockery or else the speaker may face a visit from the sexual-harassment monitors in Human Relations. This assertion combines two taboo topics: cigarette smoking (it was introduced as the slogan for Virginia Slims in 1968) and the pre-feminist work environment depicted in "Mad Men." But like other advertising catchphrases ("I can't believe I ate the whole thing" and "Tastes great/Less filling"), it is embedded in the collective memory of anybody who remembers watching live television as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon.
Like any new language, Boomer Speak takes time and commitment to master. Remember, some native speakers have been adding to their vocabulary for as long as six decades. Mistakes come with the territory. There is no need to be daunted just because at a sales meeting you erroneously gushed, "That's terrific. The new product line will be our Edsel." Or goofed by referring to a bar-hopping, where's-the-party colleague as being as popular as the Maytag repairman.
For in about as much time as it took Ed McMahon to intone each night, "Here's Johnnnnny," you will be speaking Boomer with newfound fluency and confidence. You will mock empty claims in meetings by snapping, "Where's the beef?" And you will know that when a senior colleague suddenly announces, "It's Howdy Doody time," he is not making infantile toilet references.
In fact, if baby boomers are still running the show where you work, you will soon find yourself -- because you are bilingual -- on the staircase to heaven. As for your contemporaries who never deign to learn Boomer Speak, they will be left to twist slowly, slowly in the wind.