BOOMERS EMBELLISH HIGH TIMES

Did 50-something baby boomers really march in all those peace
rallies, groove to all those heavy rock concerts, smoke all that
far-out dope and have all that wild "free love"?

Probably not.

A British study has discovered that baby boomers grossly embellish
their flower-power experiences. And a local expert says they have
good reasons for reinventing their past.

The survey, which questioned 3,000 adults and was conducted by
academics at the University of Salford in Manchester, England, was
assembled for the UKTV History channel in advance of a series titled
The Beatles Decade.

Although about a quarter of the participants admitted boasting they'd
been "too stoned to remember the '60s," only eight per cent said
they'd actually used cannabis. And less than one per cent had taken LSD.

The study also found:

* Although 25 per cent of the respondents claimed to have been
hippies, only six per cent actually were.

* About 10 per cent said they had previously claimed to have attended
legendary rock festivals and concerts, but in fact only 0.8 per cent
had actually attended such events.

* Nine per cent said they'd claimed to have attended a "love-in"
when, in fact, only one per cent admitted this was the truth.

Salford professor Sheila Whiteley has dubbed the phenomenon
"generational gazumping" and found that exaggerating one's youthful
experiences is three times more prevalent among baby boomers than
among those raised in the '70s or '80s.

Tim Blackmore, a 45-year-old associate professor with UWO's
department of information and media studies who specializes in pop
culture and war, says the study makes perfect sense.

"There were all these be-ins and drop-ins and love-ins," says
Blackmore, who defines the cultural period of the "sixties" as the
years from 1964 to 1973. "But generally, people just had parties. And
the parties were kind of mild."

Blackmore says the parties he attended in the early '70s generally
involved people bringing a bottle of wine, a salad and some quiche --
and then sitting around on the floor.

"It was a potluck dinner, for goodness sake," he laughs. "How many
people were really beatniks? Maybe five.

"Does attending a Rolling Stones concert mean you were a hippie?" he
asks. "Or does it mean, as was the case with so many of my peers,
that we came from middle-class homes and we went down to Maple Leaf
Gardens or the CNE and saw a big concert and then went back to our
middle-class homes?"

Blackmore says many of the things deemed outrageous during the '60s
- -- including films, drugs, clothes and attitudes -- absolutely pale
in comparison with today's standards.

"I remember wearing sandals (to school) and it was a big deal," he says.

"Now, you can walk into my university class with your pants down to
the crack in your (bum) and wearing flip-flops and a tight little
halter top if you're a gal . . . and that's just casual wear."

But why this need for boomers to embellish?

Blackmore says it has much to do with the fact that the generation
that preceded the baby boomers could proudly point to their part in
the pivotal story of the 20th century.

"The reality of their experience was that they won the Second World
War, they beat fascism, they overcame imperial Japan . . . and
created an era of wealth that hasn't been repeated," he says. "They
don't need to mythologize that because they really did it."

But while that generation rarely talked about its accomplishments,
Blackmore says baby boomers are products of a "talk culture" that
feels a deep need to validate their sense of self-worth.

"There is this incredible wish to be part of something great and
big," he says, adding that many baby boomers are probably
disappointed with their compromised lives. "We want to be able to say
that the lives we lived were important."

But while the '60s were filled with important developments like
women's liberation and the civil rights movement, Blackmore says
those great events passed most boomers by.

"It isn't that those things didn't happen," he says. "It's just that
most of us were rolling on in the mundane world we really live in."