Baby-boomer is ok I guess, but pre-senior?... pre-senior - there I finally said it! I like being this age but I don't like the tags people use especially 'pre-senior'. Awhile ago a young friend called me 'older' and referred to her aunt as being 'in your age group'... the sound of it bothered me, I got quiet, she asked me what was wrong, I said nothing's wrong, I lied.

In the weeks to follow I needed to sort through, because I'm obsessed with sorting, why ‘older’ sounds negative after all, I AM older. I'm not in that popular target market age group any more. My kids are nearing 30, there’s their friends, there’s my large family in which I'm the first-born; I have tons of nephews and nieces and at every gathering, except for my parents I am the oldest. They try to be nice by saying 'oLL-der' with the back-and-forth thumb and baby finger tilting hand motion so I shouldn’t be too hurt about their making reference to an age group.

Maybe what’s really bothering me isn’t the word but the question, “why am I bothered?" Especially if I like being the age that I am. I like that I was born in the middle of last century. In the 50s and 60s women were emerging from a stereotype, looking for uniqueness and their own identity; they dropped the ‘r’ from ‘Mrs.’ and Ms was born. I liked ‘Ms’ and used it comfortably through a couple of decades, I’d have retained my sense of identity without it though, but it was a good tag.

Typical workplace and an example of my nearly blurting out, 'What the hay are you asking me?!!’ was when at 21 and applying on a job at a large company, the male interviewer asked me if I was married and when I would be leaving them because I’d decided to get pregnant…  I really wanted the job so I told him I hadn’t given it consideration at this stage in my marriage. I got the job and 2 years later I had my son, took 15 weeks maternity leave and went back to work. My new manager advised me that now that I was a mother I had better realize that my work would still come first in her office… I told her that I work because I have a life and my son is my life, my job performance should speak for itself. Nothing more was said.

Within that decade interview questions in many large companies were modified but not because of me, because of women around and including me. All of us in similar shoes and ready to speak for ourselves and I love that I’m old enough to have seen that change in our society.

I love that I can relate stories to my kids about how life was when my job was replaced with a computer, how you really were good if you typed 60wpm on a manual and if you didn’t greet others on main street people thought you were strange.

We are who we feel we are and what we feel deep down is what we project to the world. I’ve loved every decade I’ve been alive including the ridiculously terrible ones for some of the not-so-brilliant decisions I tended toward, and I plan to continue through a couple more decades and even though my body remembers fitter years, my life-memories, experiences and the legacy I leave with my children is who I am more-so than the digits in my age.

I'm not sure I've actually sorted through why I'm bothered, it's just the reference to an age group after all, but I'm letting it rest for the time being, there's too much other stuff to write about, like everything else that was going on when 60 wpm was fast!