Who was it that invented the term “baby boomers” to describe the generation born between 1946 and 1964? It sounds like something Tom Brokaw would do, doesn’t it? Well, maybe not invent it, but at the very least, he was handed a news item about baby boomers that he read over the air. Whoever said it first, once we heard the term, we heard it all the time. It was used everywhere to describe us. Which makes that either good advertising or good propaganda.

Only I never thought that. I thought that giving my generation a nickname to accommodate the notion that men come home from war and make babies, and now this extraordinarily large group of babies is growing up and buying Beatles records, well, there was nothing wrong with that. We were the baby boomer demographic. Whole industries grew up whose sole purpose was to service our baby boomer needs. We were one large group of entitled people going through life being marketed and sold to.

Until it all changed when our children came along. A new generation to sell to, ones with different needs, different wants. And they called that generation Generation X. I don’t know who invented that term or why they would pick such a useless name that makes no sense as a descriptor. Don’t you solve for X? X is the unknown? Generation Unknown?

Bad descriptor notwithstanding, when I first heard Generation X and Gen X bandied about, all I could say was whoa, that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I understand naming my generation for its sheer size and strength as it bulldozed its way through the world. But the best that can be said for Gen X is they are our children — a commendable thing but surely not worth giving them a name. A stupid name at that.

And, of course, it just went from bad to worse, Gen X spawned the millennials who begat Gen Z (what happened to Y?), who were succeeded by Gen Alpha. The namers do realize that they’re going to have a problem with names once they get to Zeta, but their thinking is, let someone else deal with that down the road. Of course, they could always just stop naming us. I never bothered to check which generation my kids or their spouses or their children were in. I fear that if I asked them now, it would be a lot like asking them what their zodiac sign is. If I’ve waited this long to ask, how much do I really care?

The creative geniuses who name successive generations have gone a step further. In an attempt to be inclusive and not leave anyone out, they named the generation before the boomers The Silent Generation and the one before that, The Greatest Generation.

Really? Greatest compared to what? Silent as opposed to loud? I mean, who comes up with these names? Whoever it is, they peaked at baby boomers.

Our musical interlude this week is provided by the Rolling Stones …