That Granny? Probably way cooler than you.

You gonna let an eighty-year-old granny beat you?

I’ve heard comments like this a lot lately. And it’s funny, right? Conjures up images of a dotty old woman on her rocker, watching The Price is Right, and knitting but not being much good for anything else. Even the thought of being beaten by her would embarrass a young person. Great way to motivate, huh? Hmmmmm…

A granny in her seventies or eighties now would have been in her teens or twenties in the 1960's. Some of eighties-up folks were Silent Generation but many of them were vanguard Boomers. Making love, not war. Sleeping rough, dancing barefoot, groovin’ to rock and roll, and marching for change. They were hippies, man. It was the Civil Rights Movement and Boomers were flexing their muscles for the first time. These people sang, smoked pot, and above all, enjoyed themselves. Honestly, that granny was probably way cooler than you.

People who are in their eighties laid the groundwork for our current technology and trained the computer geniuses who built tech you use every day. Bill Gates, the daddy of all things Microsoft is 66 years old. Steve Jobs would have been 67 in February. Steve Wozniak is 71 years old. But they didn’t develop their amazing tech in a vacuum.