– By Jeff Petersen

Baby boomers were born between 1946 and 1964, when 3-D glasses became popular, Hula hoops trimmed many a hip, stamps sold for four cents and suburbs were invented to catch the overflow from the cities.

In those same years, Coupe de Villes sprouted tail fins, and constipation in Washington, D.C., reached an all-time peak.

The prune rode valiantly to the rescue.

Today most baby boomers are reaching the constipation years. But there is no way they will admit it, and hence are spending more time in the bathroom than any previous generation, wasting precious hours that could be used sorting through credit card offers or hanging up on telemarketers.

Baby boomers, you see, have an overriding need to be hip. That’s true even though their children, the fruit of their loins, have been trying to convince them for years that hip is fading rapidly in the rear-view mirror.

And prunes are on the definitely-not-hip list.

Prune producers have the unenviable task of making their product enticing. Have they responded by selling prunes in plain silver wrapping?

No, the prune industry has repacked their product into bright, modern packaging and now calls it, at least in one instance, Pitted Dried Plums Plus.

The marketing meeting to come up with that name must have been a doozy. A rule-of-thumb says that a sit-down meeting will last about 15 minutes for each person attending. A stand-up meeting, by contrast, will last on average three minutes per attendee.

You might want to test this formula in your workplace.

OK, say four people attended our prune repackaging meeting. That would have pushed the total time to one hour.

In that time, Person A said, We need a new name for prunes. Shall we call them pitted plums?

Person B said, How about dried plums?

Person C, a close personal friend of Person A, suggested pitted plums plus.

Person D, a close personal friend of Person B, suggested dried plums plus.

Then they battered each other with thrown prunes until …

No, in the end, civility reappeared. The winning name, however, did have one slight problem in that it spills over the end of a package. A consumer, if he is not careful, will read andamp;quot;itted Dried Plums Plu,andamp;quot; look both ways and then stealthily stick the product in the shopping cart, under the milk.

Prunes, fortunately, are

indestructible.

They can even survive being carried out of the grocery store on the very bottom of a shopping bag.

Of course, many other items are on the not-hip list that baby boomers are trying to avoid at all costs. Here’s a partial list:

? Rocking chairs

? Complete rectal exams

? Industrial strength

Preparation H

? Norman Rockwell paintings

? Wrinkles

? Spray-on hair

? Billy beer

? Spam

? Black knee socks

with white shoes

? Blue hair

Maybe it’s time baby boomers improved their quality of life and got over their prune obsession. Sure, prunes are ugly, have lots of wrinkles and are decidedly not hip. But a regular prune diet will make it a lot easier to sit through long meetings.

Reach the author at

jpetersen@lagrandeobserver.com.