Geezer This!Recent wire service stories, constructed to make the creaky feel good, tell us that baby boomers find their age an "asset" at work. Presumably, none of the people interviewed have to lift anything on their jobs. I'm a baby boomer. I'm 53. I work as a reporter for a daily newspaper. Two months ago, I was covering a suburban school board meeting and I noticed that almost everyone at the meeting, including the committee members, was younger than I was. So, I smoked a pipe on the way back to the newsroom — smoking a pipe being one of the things you can do as an old guy. If I were a female reporter, I'd have powdered my nose during the meeting. Yeah. Forget this crap about "fitting in" with your younger colleagues. Call 'em all "kid." It's good for them, and it's good for you. Unlike most other dismissive nicknames, I don't think it's actionable, either. Music? Don't like too much of what the young guys like, except maybe a little rap — and ONLY the real nasty stuff. And please, shut up about the "rock and roll" of your youth. Sinatra was cool. Elvis was cool. Snoop Dogg IS cool. The Beatles were wimp- asses who spent the first part of their careers trying to sound black and the second part trying to sound profound. Ditto the Stones. Oh, yeah, and Jim Morrison couldn't write at all. He wasn't mystical. He was drunk. Cultivate a smell. I don't mean you shouldn't bathe. Men, smoke a cigar on the way to work. The smell of cigar smoke on your clothes says, "I'm old, I'm tough, and I think your iPad is a freakin' toy." Women, get yourself an obnoxious floral perfume. Orchid is a good one because it stinks nearly as badly as a cigar. Get a little fat. Weight doesn't give you gravity, it IS gravity. Push that belly in front of you. Women, start wearing those loose Gypsy clothes that make you look like you can file a monthly expense report AND cast spells. If you're married, flaunt it. When one of the young, single men/women at work says something you think sounds either dumb or too certain, say: "Still single? Yeah.
If you've been married several times, make it sound like an adventurous life, instead of a series of failures. "My third husband, Jack," you sigh. "He had the morals of a state senator, but he could stay awake for days, like a werewolf." Who knows if werewolves can stay awake for days, but it sure makes you sound more interesting than that 22-year-old account manager with the zero dress size, doesn't it? At offsite workforce gatherings, allude to a wild 1960s and '70s sexual past. Indicate that you did some stuff at Woodstock that required more than three people to get done. Kids in 2011 get more sex in middle school than anyone got at Woodstock, but no one under 50 knows that. Joke about past drug use, too. Not pot or cocaine or heroin, either. Joke about LSD and Mescaline. If you have to talk about marijuana, talk about "Thai stick." No one under 40 ever heard of Thai stick. Bring sardines for lunch, like your dad took to his job at the refinery. Bring a can of potted meat. Eating weird stuff is another age-related privilege. And don't bring intricate dishes to office "potlucks." What, I'm in my 50s, so I know how to make Mexican 7-layer dip? Bring plastic forks. Let one of the kids in the office get off his lazy ass and bring something besides a bottle of soda. Wear a fedora. Wear cowboy boots. Those two pieces of advice go for men and women. And even if you are a political conservative, say you're a socialist. Scares hell out of people in their 20s, particularly if they're $40,000-a-year white-collar baby pimps who hope someday to get rich hiring illegal aliens. Crack your knuckles. The older you get, the louder you can crack your knuckles. Give advice. You've earned the right. Once, a couple years ago, I knew a guy in his 20s who was going through a painful breakup with his live-in girlfriend. "Kid," I said to him. "How old are you?' "Twenty-seven," he said. "Hell," I said. "I don't remember who I was living with when I was 27." It was the nicest thing I ever said to the kid. To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2011 BY CREATORS.COM 
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