Boomer Gloomer?

For the record, I’ll turn 58 next month and, thanks to losing a couple of scalpel fights with surgical oncologists, I swing a golf club like I’m 20 years older. But hey, since there was a mercifully brief time in 2003 when I don’t think my docs thought I’d see 51, I’m just grateful to still be a live boomer.

Nevertheless, I’m experiencing just a touch of gloominess during Melanoma Awareness Month. So much of the melanoma awareness news I’m reading emphasizes the growing impact of this beast on 20-somethings, particularly young women who’ve dwelled in tanning beds. Don’t get me wrong, that’s an awful truth that needs to be told and I commend the awareness campaigners who are telling it, but am I to infer from this very important message that if melanoma was “just” a problem for old boomer guys of Celtic descent we should care less about it? Yikes.

I know there are a lot of deficit hawks in Congress who’d like to float me off in a kayak into Arctic seas before I become eligible for Medicare or Social Security benefits. Sorry, I’m just not willing to volunteer for that mission or succumb to melanoma any time soon. So, as a proud member of a demographic group that, I’ll readily admit, is often a bit too self-absorbed, I defiantly shout out to all melanoma awareness campaigners “me too”!