Did you hear that I published a book? Seriously, everyone who knows me knew I would – I have a ‘completion thing’.

The term stems from one of the few movie dialogue lines I can recite -“I don’t have a completion thing” – it’s brevity a key to its clarity. It stood out in the angst-laden ramble of one of the characters in 

The movie was an 1983 hit, the ‘Thirty-Something” movie of its time. Filled with ‘glory days’ nostalgia, sorrow, and friends’ support, it demarked the decade when everything was big: hair, shoulder pads, Wall Street, and bravado.

Another key is that I couldn’t connect with its meaning, so it was tucked in a ‘unknown’ mental file, awaiting its reality match as I led life.

I know realize that, unlike the movie character, a ne’er-do-well under-achieving skunk named Nick, I have a ‘completion thing’, fostered by my Grandfather’s phrase: “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.”

1983 was also the year that I met a group of pre-teens who already adopted the ‘Life owes Me’ mantle.’ I was working as a speech-language pathologist in the public school and had a group of therapy clients in the sixth grade: they stymied me because there was nothing I could offer them to motivate them to alter their vocal behaviors. Probably not even a new surf board or ride in my Corvette. I was prescient of their lack of character, a yento survive by not working.

Now those kids have become adults, and, along with many others, I’ve watched them morph fully into the “Entitlement Generation”. Their spawn escalated the art of responsibility denial. Many live with their Baby Boomer parents, living off their dole. The most egregious have transmigrated to what I call ‘Making a Living by Lawsuit.”

We used to laugh at the Mad magazine covers that featured an adult Howdy Doody-looking face with the phrase, “What? Me worry?” Now we Baby Boomers fret because young’s seem to say, “What? Me work!”

Seriously. It is all about me to the Boomer Generation: who’s going to pay my Social Security? Not! We earned.

Are ‘The Milllenials’ going to make millions like the “Greatest Generation’ and ‘Baby Boomers’ who came toddling after? NO – because they don’t have to: they get to spend Grandma’s money. They are entitled.

Optimistically, the ‘Big Chill’ ended with the celebratory nonsense of “Joy to the World”. There’s always a happy end.

Say when…