In time, we all end up on the other side of the generation gap
By: Hank Kalet
My dad and I used to have a running argument when I was a teen over my hair.
I used to wear my hair long not Allman Brothers long, but approaching my shoulders. He used to say, "when are you going to get a haircut?"
My argument was pretty simple: How I wore my hair was my choice, a personal choice that he would just have to live with. And to his credit, he did, though he rarely missed the opportunity well into my 20s, in fact to needle me about it (my rejoinder: "At least I have hair, old man").
So here I am 20 years later, just days after my 44th birthday, sounding like the grouchy oldster I criticized my dad for being.
But rather than hair, I find myself carping at current fashions the baseball hats worn at an angle or with the bill pressed flat, the baggy pants with the same irrational carping enthusiasm that my dad had toward my flowing locks.
I realized this last week as I watched the Mets and Cardinals battle. Cardinal rookie Anthony Reyes was pitching and the announcers were talking about the brim of his cap, which he presses perfectly flat before each game. I thought it looked absurd and almost unnatural (if a ball cap can ever be said to be natural). Shouldn’t the bill automatically curve to account for his forehead? And why is he wasting time before games ironing?
I’d seen a guy at the mall with a similar hat. His was several sizes too big for his head and I felt like escorting him to a sporting goods store and buying him one that fit.
I have a similar reaction when I see someone wearing a baseball cap cocked crookedly on his head, tilted a little to the back and off to the side. I want to go up to him and straighten it in the same way my dad must have wanted to come at me with a pair of scissors or an electric clipper.
The list of things that can set me off has grown increasingly long over the years as I’ve gotten older and has included everything from school fundraisers (shouldn’t our taxes cover this stuff?) and rude drivers to Jessica Simpson covering Nancy Sinatra and supermarket baggers who mix my frozen foods with the cleaners.
I mean, really, what is this world coming to?
The answer to that question is that it is coming to the same place to which it always comes; it is me that has changed or, to be more accurate, has started to calcify.
But perhaps that is not such a bad thing, at least if a study published over the summer is right.
According to the news reports (I first came across it first in The Baltimore Sun and then later found it in Forbes magazine), aging curmudgeons "maintain a higher level of intelligence than easy-going seniors." The study of 381 healthy men and women between 19 and 89 appears to have found a link between what it calls "agreeableness" and intelligence, with more ‘agreeable" seniors fairing worse on the battery of tests administered than their less agreeable counterparts.
"This implies, the researchers suggested, that being older and unfriendly might actually equate with being smarter," according to a story in Forbes.
"By way of explanation, the authors pointed out that prior research has indicated that highly intelligent people tend to be more independent, and that self-reliance can perhaps render the need to be agreeable less important."
At the same time, 135 younger participants between the ages of 19 and 60 were found to have the "kind of openness younger people need to absorb new information perhaps less meaningful to older and smarter adults who have already acquired a lot of knowledge." (Forbes)
The upshot, according to Forbes, is "that the association between intelligence and personality changes with age with the kind of openness younger people need to absorb new information perhaps less meaningful to older and smarter adults who have already acquired a lot of knowledge."
I’m not sure what to make of all this. I’d like to think that I’m still open to new things and new approaches and that I’ll retain this openness 15, 20, even 30 years down the line.
But then, some kid with a crooked hat will come to my door, mom or dad in the background, asking me to buy peanut brittle to help fund his trip to Europe with the band and all bets will be off.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. He can be reached via e-mail, or through his weblog, Channel Surfing.

