The Last Baby Boomer: The Story of the Ultimate Ghoul Pool - Softcover

Rodell, Chris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1491785004 ISBN 13: 9781491785003

Publisher: iUniverse, 2015

Synopsis

In 2076, the sprawling Baby Boom generation is down to one last survivor, 111-year-old Martin McCrae. The distinction earns McCrae a suite at a New York City museum where contestants pay a small fee to spend fifteen minutes with him as part of an ultimate ghoul pool. If they are in the room when he expires, they win a multi-million dollar jackpot.

While silently praying he will die for them, contestants ask McCrae genial questions about the past, ultimately triggering recollections of rollicking times when McCrae waged war with boredom. As the ghoul pool grinds on for five years, McCrae eventually lapses into a coma and the contestants begin to resent him for his unusual longevity. While conspiracy theorists speculate that McCrae has been dead for years, his wealthy friend revives him with an offer to secure eternal life. McCrae must now decide whether to surrender to the temptation or welcome a natural death.

The Last Baby Boomer is a coming-of-really-old age satire of a dying epoch that shines a light on the illuminating fact that even though we all die, only one gets to die last. But nobody wins until death does.

About this title

From the Author

Feature stories about the first or last baby boomers have been a media staple since horny World War II veterans and their lovesick wives began a 19-year reproduction binge in 1946. The procreative burst spawned a gargantuan generation some 76 million strong. These stories often detailed the consumer impact of this massive demographic as it stormed across American pop culture, health care and every other niche of the landscape.

In fact, those stories routinely bored me. I was more interested in the men and women who were determined to be the flesh-and-blood embodiments of the first and last, women like Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, who was born at 12:01 on New Year's Day 1946. She's a retired South Jersey school teacher who has a boat she named "First Boomer." Or Carlos Barientos III who was born in Hawaii on December 31, 1964 at 6:45 p.m. "I guess I'm the last," he said. "There maybe someone who came after me, but I haven't met them yet." These aren't pie charts or graphs. They're people. You can meet them, learn from them, draw from their experience.

But I was always troubled by the stories that designated Barientos or someone else as the "last" baby boomer. It'll be decades before we can narrow down the list to determine who will be the last baby boomer.

Who will that be? And what will be done with him or her? Will they be celebrated or ignored? The actuarial tables say it's not a stretch to believe the last baby boomer will live to be 112 years old.

I speculate people will be so sick of Baby Boomers by then they'll take the last one, stick him in a museum suite and charge $25 to be with him for 15 minutes. If they're in the room when he dies, they win the jackpot. It has the potential to be the ultimate ghoul pool.

It seemed like a story ripe for lively satirical fiction. Because what if he doesn't die? What if he just keeps on living? What if it turns into ghoulish reality show that perfectly sums up the ethos of so much of what the Baby Boom generation has wrought?

Those are the seeds of "The Last Baby Boomer."

I thought I'd have some fun with it. I wanted to write a story that combines the exuberance of life with the fact that every life is freighted with hardship and despair. I wanted Marty McCrae to prove resilient individuals can overcome it all with cheerful buoyancy. I wanted a real character, like so many of the baby boomers I know. And I wanted him to be an exaggeration of my exaggerations, because he could be me. I was born February 15, 1963.

My grandfather lived to be 97 and he was incredibly impatient with death. He'd buried all his friends, his body was breaking down, his once large life was closing in on him. And he resented the hell out of it.

What will I be like if I through genetics and chance become the last baby boomer?

Or what if it's you?

You just never know. It could happen.

Because everyone has to die.

But only one of us gets to die last.

Edition details

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1491785004
• ISBN 13: 9781491785003
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256