'Boomerang Boomers,' 50-Year-Olds Who Move Back in With Their Parents are My New Idols
A couple of years back, I had the honor of being invited to a local high school's Safe Grad Night and address all the young people as they took the next important step on their personal journeys. To prepare, I found an article I'd written for the old paper edition of Barstool, which was a graduation speech written entirely in movie quotes. And it ended with this one. Based on my altogether too many years of adulthood, Thornton Melon's classic, "Don't go! It's rough out there! Move back in with your parents! Let them worry about it!" is the wisest, sagest, and most applicable advice I've ever heard.
If only I'd listened to Rodney when he said it, and moved back in with my sainted mom, the last few decades would've been way less stressful. I would've had no bills. No house to have to keep up. No wife, which means no in-laws. No kids, which means no parent-teacher conferences where they come up with polite ways to tell me what a pain in the ass my son is. No youth sports, coaching, band practices, play dates, finding babysitters, fights at the dinner table over eating vegetables. None of that. My whole adult life would've been nothing but coming and going as I pleased, every meal provided for me (with the secret ingredient always being love), my laundry getting done without my involvement, never picking up after myself, all night card games with my divorced buddies. Yup, life would've been a gravy train with biscuit wheels.
Well as it turns out, some of my demographic group are living my dream for me:
Source - The Covid pandemic has led to growing numbers of baby boomers in Britain moving back in with their elderly parents, experts have said. ...
“The pandemic has dramatically changed the way many of us are living,” said Stuart Lewis, the founder of Rest Less, a digital community for people aged 50 and older. “A number of our members have moved back in with their parents during the pandemic.”
For many, the return home has been a positive experience. Emma Egan, a 56-year-old teacher from New Malden, said moving in with her parents after her marriage broke up was a “blessing”.
“We spent many great times together during lockdown,” she said. “I now live at home purely because I really enjoy living with them. When I do move out, I will miss them terribly. They are my friends as well as my parents, and they are the coolest people I know.”
Jim Jackson says moving back home turned out to be a positive experience. The creative director, 61, and his wife moved back into his parents’ house after their children left home and he lost his job.
“Knowing that finding a new job at the age of 60 was not going to be easy, we decided that the best plan was to sell our home to be free of our mortgage and move into my parents’ basement,” he said.
Ha! Take that, Millennials! Suck on these Old Balls, Gen-Z! Your whole life these desiccated old husks have looked down their noses at your unproductive asses while they were busting their humps just to make ends meet. They've used "mom's basement" as a pejorative to ridicule every college grad who doesn't have a place of their own yet.
But guess what? They've finally figure out that they couldn't beat you, so they're joining you.
Yes, the hypocrisy is delicious. But if their moms are anything like mine, so is the meatloaf. And so are the actuarial tables. Because unlike you, they won't have to wait 30 years or so for mom and dad to croak so they can inherit the house. Their folks are practically standing in their own graves as it is. It's just a matter of waiting it out. Making it look like you're really out there pounding the pavement on that job search and something is going to give any day now, until their hearts give out.
And talk about making lemonade out of the pandemic's lemons! (Homemade lemonade at that, where your mother squeezes them fresh and uses real sugar, instead of just mixing a powder.) Using Covid as an excuse to move back into your old room with the Farrah Fawcett poster and the Star Wars bedspread hiding your stash of Penthouses between the mattresses is absolutely ingenious. Granted, the whole plan depends on the 'rents never hearing about a job opportunity opening up for you in the middle of widespread labor shortages. But then again, at that age they're probably looking for someone to baby so they can feel young again. Win, win.
I only wish I'd thought of this. Because now it's too late. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got about five hours of work to do clearing leaves out of the yard and contemplating where it all went wrong.