Dating a Trailing Boomer

I'm reading a Pew/Internet and American Life Project survey report, and am not surprised by the findings (12-17 year olds engage more in IMing and think emailing is for "old people" but have not abandoned it; they are more likely to play online games; 18-28 year olds are more likely to create a blog and job hunt online; etc. etc.).

What I was not expecting was for the age group of 41-50 to be defined as "Trailing Boomer," and 51-59 be "Leading Boomer." Now, the 13 year age difference between David and myself puts him as a Trailing Boomer, which just hit me in the most unexpected way! I'm dating a version of a Boomer! Only my parents are Boomers! Sheesh. But David is a young Trailing Boomer, and most would mistake him for a old Gen Xer.

However, I do think that part of the attraction he has for me is my comfort with computers (although it bites him in the butt when I'm on them for 7 hours on a weekend). In the beginning of "us," I came over one night to give him a lesson in emailing, excel, and copying and pasting. How cute! But how interesting that this was second nature to me, and an uphill climb for him. My co-worker dated an almost Trailing Boomer, and she says that while he could copy and paste, he had trouble with attachments and never could open them.

There is no doubt that I am the IT person at home. It is I who hooked up the Vonage, migrate David from webmail to Entourage to gmail whenever the wind blows, yet I put my foot down at connecting the speakers to the stereo. If there is no USB, I become very confused, and must consider calling BoyFriendForHire.com if David is not around.

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