I am as boomer as they come but I had to look up every popular culture reference you made starting with 'Wavy Gravy.' Do the old people in your life really smell bad? And what the hell have your parents done to you?

This is very cute. Your gen wasn't apologizing at the beginning of the Obama campaign. I get it. I've been writing about it for three years! Thank god you listened to what we did and not what we said. I don't know what happened to the vast majority of us: arrogance did a job on us, but you brought many of us back, and it is all ancient history now. It is just such a delight to begin again....

This is the best article. Thanks for your perspective. I will

share it with my Gen X chldren!

The boomers' earnestness was born of the bright promise that was JFK and lofty the goals that Martin set before us. The darkness set in with their murders and Vietnam.

Your darkness set in with 9/11 and the Bush regime. Here's hoping that the promise we see in Obama gets us back into the light.

I, too, as a cynical Gen Xer was thrilled when I learned that Obama had won.

However, I wouldn't go so far as to claim it was the first time in my life that I felt idealistic and optimistic about our country's future. I was pretty excited when Clinton was elected, too. Partly because of what wound up happening during his term, I am not about to hail Obama as some kind of savior.

He's human; he'll make mistakes, just as every president has done. He may even make big mistakes. Who knows? If we expect so much of him from the start, we'll inevitably be disappointed. But then I'm a cynic.

We want to follow this man, and trust him, and give him our full support.

I don't know, Heather ... I want him to follow us, and I expect us to have to fight tooth and nail to keep his attention now that he's in Washington.

Maybe that's too cynical, maybe it's too Gen-X-a-licious, I don't know. But I do know that Kennedy, a first of his own in so many ways, started the country down a long, perilous path because he got the nation to ask not, and just go along with his brightest and best.

Obama says he wants us to be the change we want to see. I say we take him up on that.

Hell, I was actually born on the front cusp of the boom, the last of the Silent Generation, but damn near all my contemporaries have been boomers, because the bulk of that Silent Generation didn't want anything to do with us. They were all older. They were also silent. Be that as it may, me and my boomer crew were anything but silent, and we've never shut up since, so we've become used to that dismissal and eye rolling.

You know, though, we did that to our Greatest Generation parents, and they got over it and, in the end, we all realized that somewhere in the middle was the truth all along. It's happened again, and it's just as gratifying this way as it was when my dad finally swallowed a few bitter pills and acknowleged some things I never thought I'd hear from him.

Thank you. That's all, just thank you. Thanks for helping to close the circle and maybe we won't need to keep applying these generational labels someday. I never wanted to be "silent" anyway, and I never liked the Baby Boomer appelation much either. I've always most of all liked being recognized for being me, for better or worse.

I'm sure Wavy Gravy feels the same way.

We all did it this time. All of us. We couldn't have done it without each other.

You got that 110 per cent right. Thank you.

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I never totally wrote off boomers--I was just tired of them calling us irrelevant. It was tit-fot-tat; let's kiss and make up.

And we like Obama because he listens to us.

This ol' geezer parent definitely "prattles" on to her two teen boys and your article has given me hope and peace.

I hope that as my sons mature they become as insightful and honest as you have been. Your own parents should be very proud of you (wow, I really never thought I'd actually be old enough to say that to anyone!)

And, I will print your article and read it every time my own sons politely back out of the room when I start prattling... It will bring me peace.

pop culture, what you're really talking about is ageism. We get it. You're younger and cuter and have longer to live. Big whoop.

As for the Obama worship, please. I'm just thrilled to the gills for black people, after all the cr-p they've put up with in this country. And it puts the screws in right wing attacks on affirmative action, because Obama is so qualified. Don't kid yourself, though. He's a smart cookie alright, and was sharp enough from day one to swipe the Clinton policy agenda, which is what he'll use to govern. But the speeches that send you are stuffed with canned rhetoric and shallow chiches.

Thanks for the sneering apology, but you don't get anything. Try doing something useful for three seconds and get back to us.

We boomers have given you so many bad and difficult lessons in what happens when you place your trust in those who promise you everything, but never deliver, nor intend to deliver anything but their own agendas. Don't forget this as we did.

PLEASE remember, that those who are most likely to say the equivalent of "Trust me," whether they be friends, lovers, used car salesman, bankers in credit card disclosure statements with "fixed" interest rates that aren't fixed at all or the most honest looking, sincere, clear-eyed politicians; all those who say, in a thousand ways, "trust me," are precisely those who can and should never be trusted.

Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, all said "trust me" in a million different ways, then betrayed that trust at every turn. Clinton didn't say it until his problem with women of a certain age with whom he couldn't seem to keep his pants zipped came to light, but other than that, not at all. Meanwhile, all those who called him "slick willy" and impeached him proclaiming how morally superior they were (while doing similar things to him in their own lives, it has been revealed) were exactly those who should never have been trusted.

I never heard Obama say "trust me" or the equivalent of it even once in this campaign. He didn't need to, but all those who raised questions about his trustworthiness are the people we still need to watch out for... and those who, due to their own dysfunctions, can't be trusted and yet, at the same time, can't judge who else can and should be trusted.

It's been a long time since we had a leader who was worthy of so much trust. Even if Obama makes a few mistakes along the way, we can still trust him, because we'll know that what's beneath his surface is exactly the same as what's up front. Unlike so many most recently before him, his agenda is exactly what he's told us it is. This, of course, will not prevent all those who have ulterior motives themselves, which he's preventing from being accomplished, from accusing him of having ulterior motives for everything he does. They can't imagine anyone would be different from themselves.

Still, despite what they'll try to do to him, let's help Obama make his dreams and ours a reality and not be a bit afraid to verbally, at least, slap down those who can't trust him or anyone else, and because they can't trust, nor imagine what it would be like to be someone else, always feel completely justified in seeking for ways to accomplish their own selfish ends to the spiritual, physical, or economic impoverishment of everyone else.