Baby Boomers '52

Born a third the way into the 18-year Boom

we 1952-ers travel just ahead of the crest of the wave . . .

. . . we're the froth.


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Friday, July 16, 2010

Arm Flaps

OK. Here is a brilliant idea just waiting for exploitation: Arm-Flap Body Purses.

As time goes on I notice the possibility that this could come about without surgery, beyond the attachment of Velcro or some other decorative clasp.

Yes, I am talking about your arm flaps. Your Nannies, if you will. In case you haven't been informed, it's too late for us Baby Boomers to retrieve elasticity along the underarm. I learned this from an Eminent Authority -- my 20-year-old daughter.

I am still dense enough as a mother to try to get one up on her now and again and reminded her of Madonna when she dropped this wisdom upon me in the non-fat yogurt section of the dairy aisle. I was buying.

"Mother," she said, dropping the $3 per carton not on sale yogurt into the cart. Ten of them. "That is my point exactly. She looks terrible."

Now it seems to me that Madonna and I are within the same decade, albeit at different ends. And it seems to me she has been considered risqué within my adult lifetime -- although i realize even using the word risqué notes my age. And I am pretty sure she was showing off a buff body just the other day in the checkout stand.

Well lo and behold in the checkout lane with my Eminent Authority she whips out a Blackberry and Googles 'disgusting underarms + Madonna' -- or something akin. Whap and there is the screen in my face, there are disgusting, sinewy arms, veins bulging out of them, hands equally strained each hold at least a 500-pound grocery bag handle. The rest of the picture was off the screen. But I felt the power.

"Pretty impressive," I said.

"Yeah," she said. "So you see what I mean."

"Hmmmmmm," I say, which became my Om of motherhood once my daughters became daughters as opposed to simply babies and children.

So I take away from this grocery store epiphany that if Madonna started too late to have decent looking arm flaps I can pack it in now. Period.

This was reverberating with me this morning as I walked the dogs, my flaps flapping in time to their dog jog. I thought how productive if I were listening to my Basic Traveling Phrases in Spanish tape.

The Eminent Authority says she can get the old tape (it gives you phrases for buying 36-print black and white film) onto my i-pod. This means I'll have to learn how to handle my i-pod -- which I've put off for three Christmases -- as well as the travel phrases -- which I've put off since high school. And where would I carry that? I already look like Gypsy Rose Lee's grandmother with my walking paraphernalia now.


Along with the two vastly different sized retractable dog leashes, a sling to carry the purse dog when she gives up the ship, my cell phone -- because three acquaintances around my age were in dumb, potentially lethal accidents a couple years ago, two had cell phones on them at the time and they survived. The third did not and he did not.

So this is what I carry and where does that leave an i-pod ... well, you can see how the epiphany arrived.

I'm thinking a combination of Origami and the stuff that keeps pasties on. Perhaps as the flaps increase in both size and porosity new styles could be incorporated. Then, instead of throwing out all of our sleeveless blouses we could show-off our Under-Arm Body Purses. There could become eminent salons where creative gay men design and install those destined to be recorded as haute couture.

I already anticipate that the Eminent Authority will call this gross. (I try to keep to myself the triumph that this particular piece of slang has survived the generations intact just as I attempt to refrain from pointing out that their generation's best songs are usually covers of ours.)

Well isn't it about time we just said 'boo-hoo' right back to them? We are the Baby Boomers, after all. And our wealth has locked them out of the economy, so it still is all about us. I say let's just go for it. I'm thinking we could get Madonna to do some pretty risqué advertising for the product.

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