Re: [A/S] Re: Younger Members

["Robert C Townsend" <rctowns@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I began full-timing in a '65 Globetrotter when I was twenty-six years old.
This was in 1976. I was just recently divorced, and planning to move
cross-country, from New York, where i'd lived all my life, to Los Angeles,
where my parents and several sibs had preceded me... (Some of the VAC-ers
have heard this story already). Like most young 'boomers', i had little use
for the elder folks of my parents' and grandparents' generations - As i
began my trek across these united states in my 20' trailer, packed with my
books, instruments, vinyl records (remember them?) and my two cats, Moogus
and Mouse, i had occasion to re-evaluate my opinions about older folks. Lots
of them, in fact.

Staying in campgrounds and trailer parks along old Route 66, i met some of
the most vital, creative, energetic, smart, and funny people i'd ever
encountered... many of them thrice my age.

Now that I'm getting up there myself (although still astonishingly immature
for my age), most of my acquaintances are in their 20's and 30's - (I'm an
overaged graduate student - returned to school in my mid-40's), I find those
opinions of my youth re-asserting themselves. The images of the 'grumpy old
men' and stick-in-the-mud conservative types, 'grandmotherly' women, etc...
And then I attended the International in Bismarck last July, and was
reminded of what i'd learned in my own youth.

The tendency to selectively attend to our differences - especially those
that support stereotypes - is well-documented. This is readily observed in
the relative number of posts regarding unpleasant versus pleasant
experiences with the 'Top of Georgia' park. We might remind ourselves, too,
that there are certain 'selection' and 'availability' biases operating here.
How many septuagenarians do you know with an email address?

It's a fact that the VAC membership tends to be a bit younger, on average -
reflecting, i think, the fact that we tend to have different priorities -
limited 'free' time, still raising families, workplace obligations, etc.,
and can't pick up and go like our retired elders... AND, i still think it's
important to make the effort to support the WBCCI - as well as the
intra-clubs - precisely to prevent promoting the inter-generational drift
implicit in this particular 'thread'.

After all, we Airstreamers do tend to live longer, and in better shape, than
the general population - personally, i'd like to have this be an
organization to 'grow into'...

Tuna
wbcci #8862, VAC