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On the other hand, my own millennial son, Grady Page, age 30, tells me he is "extremely critical of the idea that there's anything new about a millennial identity."

Today's "OK, boomer," delivered with suitable eye-rolling condescension, is only a "repetition of the generation gap" that I was writing about in the 1960s. "Only it's worse," he said, "because at least in the '60s you had some sort of a real social critique that went along with that," like the anti-war movement, "war on poverty" and the civil rights movement.

"Now everybody's just seeking to identify with products and tastes for things like avocado toast," he said.

Hey, lay off the avocado toast. That's one of the Generation Z fads that I find to be pretty good.

More seriously, I think he's shortchanging the explosion of activism that we have seen around issues like climate change, gun safety and police brutality in his own generation, which has more reasons than mine to care about them.

Nevertheless, we agreed that if the "OK, boomer" meme encourages the generations to talk to each other more, it can be a force for good.

When I wrote my high school newspaper report (did I mention that it won a prize?), I focused on how my generation's youngsters were trying to construct a "second society" all their own. Decades later, I realize that every generation tries to do that. It's not a different society as much as it is an attempt to improve the old one.

I finished that essay with a line from a hit by the British rockers the Animals: "I'm just a soul whose intentions are good / Oh, Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood."

I think we're still trying to do that. But now that we have fewer days ahead of us than we have behind us, we boomers have to face an unavoidable reality. We tried our best, but the future increasingly belongs to new generations. OK, boomers?

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)

(c) 2019 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.