"Never look at the trombones. You'll only encourage them." Richard Strauss, on conducting. ~ from A Wife's Guide to In-laws, Jenna Barry.  (snort)

The veneration of elders may be gone, but not because it has been replaced by veneration of youth. It’s been replaced by veneration of the independent self. ~ from Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Atul Gawande.Ya, I'm reading this one for the grant work on nursing care, but I gotta say, it goes well with the whole in-law thing too.  Indeed, we shifted away from old people centeredness a while back, a generation back.  In other words, THEY did that, the generation now that wants you to come back and kiss their asses after they spent decades squawking about getting out from under their own parents' guilt-producing life-swallowing machine of being and spent a good deal of time also ruining your life by going bonkers any number of times and projecting their own bullshit fears of having not "achieved" enough by expecting you to do it for them and not even telling you what the fuck that even meant really since it would routinely come with competing (false) statements of virtues (that they didn't believe for a minute) like "money isn't everything" and "I just want you to be happy" (so you better look like some kind of happy I can underfuckingstandgoddamnit) until you were a crippled narssissist with shit like failed relationships and student debts and kids you were raising by necessity in the "benevolent neglect" model stacking up all over your life like a motherfucker.

I'm probably thinking like a total asshole right now, I fully admit my head is a mile up my ass all of sudden (as in all of a sudden I can't help but notice, ala 2014).  But, it is also possible that baby boomers suck.