What Are You?

May 26, 2025

Greetings from Group W,

“What are you?”

I looked at him for a second, just long enough to blink and take a breath, and tried to figure out how to answer.  The truth is, I didn’t know what he was asking. 

It’s not that I wasn’t paying attention, but I was in a crowded room, and there were several conversations going on around me with people I knew.  I was dipping in and out of two or three chats and for a moment I’d lost track of where I was.  So, ok, technically I wasn’t paying attention.

One of my many weaknesses is that I don’t always like to admit when I’m lost.  I’m never lost, so that’s easy. But sometimes there’s a temporary state, sort of a recalibration, where I am establishing where I am, so to speak. 

In my brain I scrambled for the answer.  What am I?  Typically this kind of question, from a philosophical standpoint, comes from thoughtful consideration, not a panicked reaction, which is what I was experiencing.  Also, generally people of my advanced age have a pretty good handle on it.  Somehow I still was battling for a choice.

Of course, context matters.  Nearby someone was talking about shoes.  Somehow that didn’t fit.  “I am Birkenstocks” didn’t seem appropriate.  Blood type?  Why would anyone ask that? I think I am Type O, which is most common, I think, but I’m not positive.  O Negative?  What are the other choices? Since I couldn’t remember, I became obsessed with that for nanosecond.  B? R?  Is chocolate a blood type?

Should I say I am a writer? No, he didn’t ask what I ‘did’, he asked what I was.  Well, I am a writer, but that sounded so simple, like there should be more.  I don’t like the word ‘influencer’, sounds so pretentious, especially since I don’t know what it really means.

I opened my mouth, because I wanted to look like I was about to answer.  For those of you taking notes, don’t open your mouth to speak until you’re ready. Your lips dry out and stick to your teeth.

I’ve taken a few different personality type tests, which I have disparaged in this space previously.  That would not help me since I couldn’t remember the results of any of them.  There are letters, like ISTJ, or maybe that’s where you grind your teeth at night.  I remembered one test said I was a Lion.  No, maybe that was my horoscope.  I’ll just say I’m a Gemini.

At this point my mouth had been opened for what might have seemed like a long time to the guy I was talking to. My mind wandered back a couple weeks to when I crossed the border into Canada and they asked me my nationality.  That’s an easy one but I got flustered anyway, somehow was thinking about my ethnic background, which is a mishmash, and then I panicked, couldn’t come up with the right terms.  My mom is American Indian, but in Canada they say First Nations, and my Dad was from Scotland, which we call Scottish, but a lot of people say ‘Scotch’, which is the drink, not the people.  The guy in the car with me said “We were both born in the U.S.”

There was another conversation nearby that was all about politics, so maybe this guy was asking what party I belonged to.  I never liked that politics had coopted the word ‘party’, which I always thought of as a celebration, maybe cake would be involved, but now it’s spoiled. The word, not the cake.  I mean, at restaurants they still say “How many in your party?” but they don’t mean it the fun way.  And then there was the Donner Party, which was not fun either. 

I am a grandfather but I knew that wasn’t what he asked.  I looked at his eyes, almost told him I was a runner, but that didn’t seem like this topic.  Even though it had only been a second, I could tell by the look his eyes that he knew I was lost. I needed to say something. 

Religion?  That was more complicated.  Someone said that if you were baptized a Catholic you are always a Catholic, like if you were a Packers fan, but I don’t follow football either. Hm.  My mouth was getting dry, which meant more time had passed than I realized.  I was pretty sure I was going to tell him I was right-handed.

Instead, I said, “I’m not sure what I am. What are the choices?”

“I mean, what are you?” he said, “Like, …a Boomer?”

Ach, that.

I know enough about this demographic delineation to be annoyed at it, not just because it seemed like yet another way to divide people.  Because it feels like there was the ‘Greatest Generation’ and then we gave up on the good names. We got Boomer, and Millennial and X and Y and maybe Jive?  Is Clogger a generational demographic? 

Now that I knew the question I had to answer, I suddenly blanked.  So I said the most intelligent thing I could think of: “Ahh…”

“I knew it,” he said, “Boomer.”

I wanted to say something clever in response, where I could similarly minimize his existence into a one word cliché, but the moment passed and now we were talking about whatever it is that Gen Z’s are interested in, which I could not repeat here since I was now talking about shoes with someone else.  It was a very pleasant conversation where some of us had the same shoe size, and no one judged anyone on open toe versus sling back or penny loafer.

 But I thought about that Boomer comment and it annoyed me, the whole idea about simplifying someone by one descriptor, and making assumptions about them as a person.  You know how you want to say something really excellent and can’t think of it and then later when you’re driving home you think of something perfect and you say “Oh, I wish I’d said that” and then you say it out loud in the car, and you are so smug and self satisfied?  Well, that didn’t happen. 

I’m such a Boomer.

Hope this finds you expanding your vocabulary,

David

Copyright © 2025 David Smith