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60 is the new 20


by Eric Lloyd Blix


I once saw a TV commercial that showed a group of Anglo retirees laughing around a card table. The slogan 60 is the new 20 floated beneath their fat, fun-loving heads. My parents are bona fide Baby Boomers. Their lives are build on credit and catchy utterances. My mother drives an SUV and takes yoga lessons. My father rides his bike to work and follows corporate health crazes and drives a slightly smaller SUV. They each went to college and got good jobs upon graduating. Great, because neither they nor I will ever get to retire. I stood in line at the bank to get cash because the ATM ate my card. The tellers stamped checks and scribbled deposit slips like they were programmed for it. None of them made eye contact when they spoke, except for one. Some millennial automaton. I overheard him when I was next in line. "When's it due?" he asked the man in front of me, who looked rightly confused. "Pardon me," the teller said, "I mistook you for a pregnant woman." Then he did a series of back flips down the teller line, threw off his name tag, and ran out the front door. He couldn't have been older than 19 or 20.
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