Baby Boom

Police used best option availableFor several days I've sat back and read letters to the editor such the one from Henry C. Amos (Jan. 23, "Police can restrain without taking life") that criticized the police shooting of a 64-year-old Homeland woman.What Mr. Amos and others fail to remember is that police officers are not paid to be punching bags.Our job is to enforce the laws of this state and protect the public.After attempts to subdue this person with the most effective non-lethal tool available (pepper spray)

Title: "Career Crash: The New Crisis -- and Who Survives"Author: Barry GlassnerPublisher: Simon & Schuster-! Length, price: 223 pages, $21 It must be frustrating not to be a member of the baby boom generation. Media attention is most sharply focused on whatever stage of life boomers are in; problems are analyzed and dissected as if no one ever experienced them before.It's easy to be flip about baby boomers' self-absorbed desire to wring fulfillment from every aspect of their lives. Certainly other generations have borne greater hardships.

Driving home the other day, listening to the radio I heard a reference to the "key demographic marketing group, the 25 through 52s."Hmm, I thought, not bad.Ten minutes later I heard reference to the same group, only now it was "the 25 through 54s."Even better: The "key group" had matured two more years in 600 seconds. The baby boom -- epicenter of popular culture all these years -- is aging fast.We see that phenomenon reflected in coming movies, which tend to stress family values, togetherness, less risque (and risky)

The baby boom generation hasn't finished making its mark on the planet, but it probably already can claim the title of most self-assured generation in history. It's the most learned, the most mobile, the most sophisticated of any group that's come before. The boomers' formative years, like a Sesame Street episode, were sponsored by the letter "W" -- for War, Woodstock and Watergate. The times encouraged them to speak up, to go for the gusto, to just do it.Yet one task seems to overwhelm them, or at least swamp them with self-doubt: Parenting.

"It's really all about baby boomers," says Howard Stringer, the group president of CBS. "Baby boomers love Dave. He's their man."Stringer is the man who ultimately decided that David Letterman was worth $14 million a year to CBS after NBC had passed over the 46-year-old comedian for Jay Leno to fill Johnny Carson's old job. And Stringer's explanation of Letterman's appeal to CBS is the place to start in trying to understand the sense of excitement today about the debut of Letterman's new show at 11:35 p.m. on WNUV (Channel 54)

No lights. No air conditioning. Husbands and wives cooped up together for days.What to do?Hundreds of Floridians found something to pass the time after Hurricane Andrew. And nine months later, Broward County is greeting Andrew's legacy: a baby boom.Around the county, many hospitals are reporting a surge in births in May, nine months after the storm.While some of the boom stems from the area's expected population growth, many of the extra births are to families who have moved from hard-hit Dade County.

Move over, Dr. Spock, there's a new generation of books about pregnancy and parenting out there.From "The Miracle Year," a guide to the six months before and after the birth of a first baby, to "When Good Kids Do Bad Things," a guide for the parents of teen-agers, and everything in between: "The Six Vital Ingredients of Self-Esteem and How to Develop Them in Your Child," "The Seven Secrets of Effective Fathers" and "Raising Your Type A Child."There's even "Miss Manners' Guide to Rearing Perfect Children" and whole bookshelves more -- a boomlet of baby books to keep pace with the boomlet of babies.

We used to think the Beatles had it nailed down: "All you need is love," they sang. And we bought it. At least for a while.But then a lot of us got married. We had jobs and we had kids. And after a while, it turned out love wasn't enough. Or it was too much. And then a lot of us got divorced.We put aside the childish notion that "all you need is love" and instead we looked to the self-help books for . . . well, for self-help. We found ourselves reading about women who love too much, men who can't love enough, people who've given up on love.

There are people, most of them well into their 60s and 70s b now, who grew up in neighborhoods that no longer exist. There are probably thousands of them around Baltimore. I've met a few along the way.The East Street gang had reunions, celebrating their wonderful life as kids in a vibrant immigrant neighborhood that urban renewal wiped away years ago. They all had vivid memories and funny stories about the people on their street, near Belair Market. One of them even remembered the exact conditions for buying a bicycle on the "put-away plan" at a neighborhood department store.

Baby boomers, check your service. Turns out, there is no Peter Pan. Starting immediately, you are the grown-ups.You know what this means, don't you? As of now, when you and the parents go out to dinner, you pick up the check.My g-g-g-g-eneration?This is the rite of passage we've all heard so much about, but never really believed in. Never wanted to believe in. Now you can mark the date -- Tuesday, Nov. 3, 1992. Bill "Baby Boom Boom" Clinton wins the White House; Tinkerbell is dead. (The good news is, you can still wear jeans and sneaks.