“Baby boomers,” old man Barker said at the weekly canasta game. “Me, me, me. My, my, my. They all act like they’ll never get old. They think 60 is the new 16. Always running, always out power walking. Eating salads for brunch. They think they’re going to live forever. They won’t live forever, but with all that exercise and rabbit food, it will just seem like forever.”

“I don’t know what they’re thinking about half the time,” chimed in Woodrow. “They think being married is like test- driving a car. Don’t like it, turn it in and buy a new one. Feeling old, take Viagra. It wasn’t that way when I was a kid, I’ll tell you that. When you got married, you stayed married, no matter how much you hated each other. You did it for the kids.”

“That’s right,” Barker said. “But these boomers, they expect everything to be handed to them on a silver platter. They get upset if everything doesn’t go exactly their way. I’m not saying we were the greatest generation, but we stood up when we were called, we didn’t move to Canada. We didn’t dodge our responsibilities. You did your job, and you kept your mouth shut. We didn’t talk about it.

“Now everyone wants to ‘share’ feelings, everyone wants to ‘reach out.’ Has that made the world a better place? Has it. Talk shows? People sitting around talking. That’s entertainment? Please. Shut. Up.”

Woodrow discarded a six of clubs. “Boomers don’t know the value of a dollar. When we were kids, you worked for spending money. Now I hear that parents pay their kids to do homework. Paying them to do what they should be doing in the first place! No wonder this country’s in trouble. Everyone wants something for nothing.”

Barker played a seven of hearts. “They smoke dope; they think casual Fridays are good business; they take personal days; they eat yogurt as if it were some kind of yummy medicine. They don’t cook – they microwave stuff. They think people owe them a living; they drink lattes and slurp gelatos. They use hair gel. I wonder if we’d have won the war with this bunch?”