01/03/2025
WELCOME TO THE CLUB!
99% of the global population born between 1930 & 1947 is now gone.
If you were born in this time span, your age is between 77 and 95 years old- an 18-year span. You are one of the rare surviving one-percenters.
You are also in the smallest group of children born since the early 1900's.
You are from the last generation climbing out of the depression who can remember the winds of war & the impact of a world at war that rattled the structure of our daily lives for years.
You are the last to remember ration books for everything from tea to sugar to shoes. You saved tin foil & poured fried meat fat into cans.
You can remember milk being delivered to your house early in the morning & placed in the "milk box" at the front door. Discipline was enforced by parents and teachers. You are the last generation who spent childhood without television. Instead, you “imagined” what you heard on the radio.
With no TV, you spent your childhood "playing outside". There was no city playground for kids. The lack of television in your early years meant that you had little real understanding of what the world even was, Our “black-and-white” TVs in the late 50s had 3 stations and no remote.
Telephones (if you had one) were one to a house. They usually hung in the kitchen (who cares about privacy). Computers were called calculators; they were hand-cranked. Typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage, and changing the ribbon. INTERNET & GOOGLE were words that did not exist.
Newspapers & magazines were written for adults & your Dad would give you the comic pages after he read the news. The news was broadcast on your radio in the evening. The radio network gradually expanded from 3 stations to thousands.
New highways would bring jobs & mobility. Most highways were 2 lanes and there were no super-highways. You went downtown to shop & walked to school.
Your parents were suddenly free from the confines of the depression & the war, so they threw themselves into working hard to make a living for their families.
You weren't neglected, but you weren't part of todays' all-consuming family focus. Parents were glad you played by yourselves. They were busy discovering the postwar world. We entered a world of overflowing plenty & opportunity; a world where we were welcomed & enjoyed ourselves. You felt secure in your future, although the depression & poverty were deeply remembered within the family.
Polio was still a crippler. Everyone knew someone who had it.
We are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our country. World War II was over & the cold war, terrorism, global warming, and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life. Only our generation can remember a time after WWII when our world was secure & full of bright promise & plenty. We grew up at the best possible time... a time when the world was getting better.
More than 99% of us are retired now, & we should feel privileged to have "lived in the best of times!" If you have already reached the age of 77 years old, you have outlived 99% of all the other people on this planet. You are a 1% er!
