You may download my copyrighted short story with the following understanding: As consideration for being able to download this without paying money for the story known as "Boomerang," you will not send the story in any format to any other person or entity or use the story in any way, whether creatively or for any other purpose--other than "fair use" under copyright law. You are, instead, encouraged to share the link to the Blog with others so that they may also download it directly themselves.
Click to download Boomerang with the understanding set forth above.
_______________________
WHAT IS "BOOMERANG"?
For those seeking to read a background of the story...
"Boomerang" is a short story I thought about for a fairly long while but finally started writing at the beginning of this year. I wanted to speak, in a semi-creative way, as an American Baby Boomer (DOB 1957) about what I see as a fundamental failure of folks around my age and older (yes, I am calling out those older than Baby Boomers, too) who have failed to provide to Millennials and to Digital Kids a solid foundation for economic growth, a habitable planet and a society that values and promotes kindness, family and solidarity over meanness, isolation and selfishness. I see our young people struggling with too much homework, too much costs to attain higher education and poorly paid and limited numbers of jobs after high school or higher education. I see our nation's infrastructure decaying and moving toward collapse. I see the ocean beginning to acidify and rise at various shore lines. And what I also see is a political discourse that cannot rise above the trivial and gossipy while it can't even find a place to promote a serious discussion about something as basic and important as to how our food is processed, prepared and distributed--to take just one important issue our children often have a better grasp about than we do.
I can go on, but the point is that the arguments and snide remarks we make against our children on Facebook and at cocktail parties, bar-b-ques and bars are more hateful and cruel toward our children than we may imagine. The story of "Boomerang" takes place in the future, when we Baby Boomers are the oldest people in our society, and it takes the self-centered, crabby arguments we make against our children today, turns them around and takes us to a place where we may finally begin to consider the desperation that is beginning to accelerate within our society.
Yes, this story is a warning of a future that may come to exist, but also may not happen at all. Maybe our world is already beginning to change for the better, at least with the increasing awareness of our young people today. But we Baby Boomers and oldsters are not making it any easier starting in this year's presidential campaign. If we understand the polling correctly, it was not Millennials and Digital Kids who chose the particular presidential nominees for the political duopoly known as the Democratic and Republican Parties. That was us. And in places such as Ohio and Florida, we seem to be making a worse choice among the two choices we served up to the public, again if short term polling is correct as of the date of this post.
As I tell my children, "You didn't make this world. We did. But you may have to take the lead to remake this world sooner than we think."
