rufus
rock and roller
I'm 55. I think of someone who was 55 when I was born and what they lived through.
Their earliest memories are of the horror of maybe losing a dad in WWI or entire towns wiped out by the Spanish Flu. They were coming of age and probably trying to start a family and make their mark when all of a sudden comes the unbelievable misery of the Great Depression, and they didn't endure that for months, but for years.
If they survived that they got to live through the worst calamity the world had ever faced in WWII. If they stayed on the homefront they gave up plenty of freedoms and were asked to sacrifice far more than I have been asked to do and if they put on a uniform and crossed an ocean to help the Russians (yes, the Russians) literally save the world, they lived through a series of horrors no human being should be asked to live through.
They watched one beloved president die and another shot down in the prime of his life. Maybe they had a son drafted into the military and sent off to die in Korea, or perhaps they held off having kids until after WWII along with the rest of the baby boomers only to see a son drafted to fight a war that eventually the majority of the country believed was futile and lost him in it.
Somehow though being asked to wear a mask is a hardship more egregious than the things someone born in 1910 lived through for decades on end.
Wear a mask? Try not getting a haircut for two months.
The horror. The horror.
Generation of spoiled-*** sissie babies.