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Can you remember what you were doing on April 12, 2004? Unlike other historical dates of significance like the assassination of John F. Kennedy or 9/11, April 12th doesn’t trigger vivid recollections of time and place. However, the date has historical significance because on that day, growing older became okay for Baby Boomers.
On April 12 last year, Billy Crystal made a guest appearance on Dave Letterman’s Late Show. Billy, who is 57, joined Dave in celebrating the talk show host’s 57th birthday. Both are Boomers, and because it was Dave's birthday they started talking about growing old and what that means for them.
Billy told stories about getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and "peeing in Morse Code." Dave spoke about how difficult it is for him to get everything working when he gets up in the morning. They laughed. The audience laughed. It was a good celebration. But more than that, April 12, 2004 became a watershed event that will go down in history as the day when it became okay for Boomers to grow older.
Dave and Billy, two admired and well known Boomers who have ridiculed and stereotyped "senior" citizens as part of their routines, found that they could comfortably talk about the realities of aging in a funny, self- deprecating manner. They weren't disparaging or ridiculing. They were charming and self-effacing. The shift from making fun of old people to laughing at themselves and their age-related physical changes is significant. What once was funny at other people's expense is now becoming funny at our own expense.
Because Dave and Billy said it was okay (and funny) to grow old themselves, it became okay for the rest of us to do it too. Comedian Richard Lewis was a guest on Dave’s show the following October and joked about how his body had become a mushy mess since he had turned 50. Dave quipped that he had recently gotten up in the middle of the night and had passed a mirror and thought an old, naked guy had broken into his house. The stereotype is changing. Now "old" is funny. And respectable.
Source: “The Boomer Project, January 2005 | 
