The generation gap hits home

It's a long way from Liverpool to Las Vegas

Think for a second: If you met a guy from your parents’ generation, would you be able to guess what kind of music he liked growing up?

What if you were from a different country and had only been living in the U.S. for 15-20 years?

I ask because I had an odd session with a rheumatologist last week. I hadn’t done any research about him other than to get a reference from my GP, so I didn’t know his age or national origin. For that matter, I didn’t even clearly understand what a rheumatologist was, but that’s another matter.

Upon talking with him for a few minutes, I guessed he was in his mid-to-late 30s and originally from eastern Europe.

He took some time to get to know me and asked about my career. Of the things I mentioned, he was most interested to hear about the magazine profiles I’d written and immediately asked which celebrity was my biggest interview.

Well, I said, the biggest in terms of size would have to be Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, making a joke that didn’t land. Of course, the doctor must’ve still been in the crib during the Lakers’ showtime era, and probably a crib far away from Los Angeles.

I thought some more and settled on Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees, who happened to be riding the hottest musical streak on earth with Saturday Night Fever at the time I interviewed him.

No reaction.

I could accept that. I came to terms long ago with the fact that pro athletes and pop stars were all getting to be younger than I was. So were doctors.

To get past the awkwardness, I started talking about the music of my era, how I was at first prejudiced against the Bee Gees’ album because it seemed to be part of a disco craze that was replacing the greatest music of the last 100 years, the music of my youth.

“What music did you like,” he asked, perking up. “Dean Martin?”

I honestly wasn’t sure I’d heard him right and made him repeat it. Yep, Dino. That’s who he thought of when guessing my musical taste.

Now, to be clear, I liked Dean Martin okay. He seemed to be a cool, easy-going guy, who didn’t take himself or anything else too seriously. But his music? I can only remember one song he ever did — “Everybody Loves Somebody,” which was written years before I was born and became his theme song for a TV variety show geared to my parents’ generation.

I seriously can’t think of anyone who would say Dean Martin was the guy who got their juices flowing in their teens and 20s — certainly not anyone under 95. (And if I were that old, I’d pick Sinatra.)

I told the doctor no, I was more of a Beatles and Stones kind of guy. He nodded and said he knew about the Beatles. Didn’t mention the Stones one way or another, but he may have thought I was referring to my kidneys, because I noticed him checking my chart.

We finished up the appointment with no more surprises, but when I got home, I googled him and learned where he’d spent his early years, and it wasn’t another planet as I’d come to suspect, but it was pretty damn close:

Siberia.

Now, far be it from me to speak ill of someone’s hometown — I grew up in Florida after all — but the only other person I ever heard of who’d lived in Siberia was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote a book about the brutal, bitter cold and isolated, forced labor camps scattered throughout that region.

Learning about my doctor’s background made me appreciate what it must have taken to get from Siberia to a respected medical practice here in the world’s entertainment capital. (I also spent a minute to read about what rheumatologists do: They deal with arthritis, inflammation and other assorted physical ailments that start showing up around my age.)

Still, I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from being medically classified as a Dean Martin guy.