20 ways Boomers had it harder than Gen Z
Baby boomers are much maligned. From climate change to the lack of affordable housing and beer costing over £6 a pint – we’re blamed for it all. Recently, a Gen Zer rounded on me for “having it easy” when I was young: “You could hop from job to job and you bought your first flat at, what – 27?”
He was right in that, financially at least, those of us born in the Boomer years (1946-64) have possibly enjoyed an easier ride than today’s youngsters. But not in all ways. In fact, when you consider the hazards we encountered every day of our young lives, it’s a miracle we survived.
Who remembers the following?
Hitchhiking
Young boomers thought nothing of sticking out a thumb and clambering into the car of any old creepy random who deigned to stop. If my 20-something daughter were to moot a similar plan, I would be forced to place her under house arrest.
Nylon bedding
Fancy that, Gen Z? Slipping in between sheets derived from crude oil, most likely from Brentford Nylons, and enduring nightly shocks from all that static electricity? No wonder the UK birth rate declined substantially throughout the 1970s. With the slightest movement in bed you risked setting your hair on fire. If it was bad for us, it was even worse for our poor mothers. Because isn’t that what every menopausal woman wants – to spend her nights sweating beneath thermoplastic polymer? These days, even the most impoverished student expects breathable cotton sheets.
No cycling helmets
Wearing one would have seemed just plain weird, and certainly attracted ridicule. However, by the late 1990s, when my own children were nearing the end of primary school, younger pupils were obliged to wear not only helmets, but virtually full-body padding for a brief trundle on tricycles around the playground.
Proper wild swimming
The younger generations think they invented this. However, decades before Dryrobes and £320 Thermocline wetsuits, we were hurling ourselves into putrid lakes and flooded quarries in our knickers and vests.
Adults smoking in cars
It rarely occurred to anyone that this might be a bad idea. Motors were basically tightly sealed canisters of smoke.
And in bed – with all that flammable nylon!
In any BBC Play for Today, a couple lighting up between the sheets was code for “intercourse has taken place”.
Transported in the boot of the car
If the thick fug weren’t dangerous enough, as children we were often transported like a flatpack wardrobe. Or – worse – in a moving caravan en route to our jolly holidays.
Chip pan fires
How often did one of these happen in your street? In our West Yorkshire village it was as regular as someone breaking a toe by dropping the Grattan catalogue on it.
Dangerous toys
How we loved our Clackers, until injuries occurred, eyes were lost and killjoy head teachers banned them from school. Boomers might also remember tumbling off their Spacehoppers and cracking their skulls. If life wasn’t hairy enough, I remember my dad giving me the mercury from a broken thermometer to play with (don’t try this at home, kids!).
Being left outside in the car while our parents went to the pub
Oh, but those Salt & Shake crisps tasted so good…
Boil-in-the-bag fish
If you weren’t scalded by hoisting the bag from the bubbling water, the thermonuclear cheese sauce would strip the entire lining of your mouth.
Boiling our faces
I grew up on Jackie magazine, which regularly advised the practice of steaming the face ‘“to open the pores”. Why would anyone do this? These days I prefer my pores to remain tightly clamped shut. Yet in teen magazine land, barely a week went by without the instruction to go away and scorch your face.
Zero sex education at schools
As a result, we were baffled as to how babies were made. Later, I actually got a job on Jackie, and saw many of the desperate problem letters sent to agony aunts Cathy and Claire. For example, “I passed a boy on the stairs… could I be pregnant?” Boomer teens were blundering in the dark.
“Melting away” our body hair
If the steaming wasn’t enough, in order to achieve smoothness of legs and underarms we would daub ourselves with a hair removal cream called Immac (mercifully, bikini areas were pretty much left alone). This stuff ponged – and we’re not talking the evocative aroma of a madeleine. More a synthetically floral stench.
Basting ourselves in oil (with zero SPF) and lying out in the midday sun like a kipper under the grill
Because nobody knew any better.
Artery-clogging dinners
I’m looking at you, Berni Inn and – my personal favourite – the Golden Egg. In the 1970s my dad, an architectural photographer, let me accompany him on jobs all over the north of England. The highlight? Stopping off for a vast “grill”, consisting of any combo of sausage, eggs, chips, chops, beans, burger, gammon and possibly a token watercress garnish. It would be another 40 years before anyone ingested a chia seed…
Narrowly avoiding choking…
…On that sixpence hiding in the Christmas pudding.
Our precious teeth – under attack
If it wasn’t a vast, greasy grill, then it was literally crunchy with sugar. White granulated, of course (brown sugar was regarded as a cranky health food for hippies). With their sophisticated palates, Gen Z would baulk if they could see our younger selves, merrily scattering the sweet stuff all over our Ski yoghurts and Weetabix. Is it any wonder our teeth are around 87 per cent amalgam filling?
Being completely knocked out…
by nitrous oxide at the dentist’s.
Expected to walk to school alone aged around six
The sole concession to road safety? A few hasty lessons amounting to “look left, look right” and a Tufty Club badge.
So there it is: our treacherous Boomer youth. Yet somehow – miraculously – we live to tell the tale. I think we deserve a knickerbocker glory for that.
Fiona Gibson’s new novel, Tis the Damn Season, is published by Boldwood
