The Don Henley Effect and Other Life Lessons
A son looks at his boomer parents – and discovers
telephones apparently once were attached to walls
By Jeff Kelley
Based on a quick survey of buddies around my age, the consensus was this: For those of us with parents who are married, we’ve never — nada once — acknowledged their anniversaries.
And why should we? There may have, either the day of or after, been a passing, mumbling “Oh yeah happy anniversary,” but nothing more. We weren’t around for the celebration, and we don’t so much think of — nor do we want to think of — the parentals as a couple. To us, they’re just Mom and Dad.
For me, though, something happened this summer: Bruce Springsteen ended up on the cover of AARP’s magazine.
Oh, and my mom and dad’s marriage turned 30.
A lifelong Boss fan, I am not sure which is crazier — that the man behind Born to Run is 60, or that my boomer dad, 52, and boomer mom, 52 on Oct. 13, have now been married for longer than I have been alive.
That’s pretty impressive, considering all that’s changed, and all the things that weren’t around 30 years ago:
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Wikipedia. From what I am told, people apparently pronounced this word “Encyclo-PE-dee-yuh.”
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Color. Have you seen pictures from a long time ago? These people lived in black and white.
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Cars. I’m pretty sure their non-existence then is a fact. Therefore, roads maybe didn’t exist, either, perhaps.
This summer, it finally hit me that the milestone my parents have hit is pretty impressive. Thirty years, no matter which way you look at it, is a very long time.
And of course, their 30th also comes with some glaring signs that they’re settling into this boomer routine pretty nicely.
For one, there’s The Don Henley Effect.
This law, published for the first time last year in the Totally Real and Not Made Up Journal of Medical Facts and Things, states that the age of a boomer is directly proportionate to the amount of Don Henley that is playing on a stereo in a boomer’s home at any given time.
In other words: The older the boomer, the more Don Henley will be heard inside the home. For my parents, this is approximately 12 to 30 hours of any given day. I will admit, however, that Boys of Summer is actually a pretty good tune, and I may regularly pour myself a red wine and listen to New York Minute while crying alone in the dark, but really, who hasn’t?
Yet even Mr. Henley’s soft, adult contemporary catalog has given way to smooth jazz in my parents’ home, a sure sign that they’re — somehow — continuing to age.
Yet despite what they may tell you, boomers know technology, though Mom once went so far as to claim to “not understand” Facebook at first. Here’s how it went down.
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THEN:
Mom: “Why would I want to know what my friend is having for lunch? I don’t care about this stuff. I don’t have time for this stuff.”
Me: “Well, Facebook is more than that, Mom. It helps you reconnect to lots of people throughout your life.”
NOW:
Mom: “Jeffrey, I just became Facebook friends with one of my best friends from high school, and I saw on her Facebook page that she just had a turkey sandwich with Havarti cheese at the new Panera.”
Me: “…”
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The bottom line is this: My parents grew up in a time when Encyclo- was the prefix for a -pedia. When Springsteen was in his 20s. When a phone was something connected to a wall. When the world, let’s face it, was a seemingly much simpler, more innocent place.
To make it through all they’ve gone through and learned in the past 30 years, I must finally say: Happy anniversary — and job well done!
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Jeff Kelley is a Richmond, Virginia - based freelance writer and marketing consultant.
[Editor’s note: Some of the exceptionally funny material in Mr. Kelley’s article, including that which claims not be made up, may have been, well, made up. But then you know the younger generation.]
