Boomers on the Edge
Before smartphones. Before social media. Before anyone thought to record the evidence.
Boomers on the Edge is a weekly storytelling podcast where two lifelong friends revisit the wild, reckless, and often unbelievable adventures of their youth. Kenn and Ron trade stories from the 60s, 70s, and 80s — the mischief, the bad decisions, and the close calls that somehow didn’t kill them.
From gritty Detroit bars and summer days on the lake to high school locker rooms and blue-collar job sites, every episode blends sharp improv, vivid memories, and outrageous true tales.
It’s unfiltered nostalgia — raw, irreverent, and laugh-out-loud funny.
If you like your comedy honest, slightly inappropriate, and full of “there’s no way that really happened” moments… welcome to the edge.
Boomers on the Edge
Pass or Fail? Boomers Didn’t Get an Easy On-Ramp
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The University of Michigan recently announced a new pass/fail grading system for incoming freshmen, saying the goal is to help first-year students acclimate to the demands of college and let intrinsic motivation guide their academic journey.
That gets Kenn and Ron thinking: What happened to the way Boomers learned to deal with pressure?
Kenn remembers his parents paying him a dollar for every A in elementary school—but being concerned when he brought home a bad citizenship grade.
Ron looks back at being a college freshman in 1977, when 18 was still the legal drinking age and nobody was worried about creating an “easy on-ramp” to college life.
The Boomers didn’t get participation trophies, pass/fail grades, or much of a transition period. You showed up, figured it out, dealt with the pressure—and sometimes you succeeded and sometimes you failed.
So is today’s approach better for students, or are we simply raising a generation that is less prepared to deal with failure and pressure?
Another Boomers on the Edge comparison of how things were then… and how they are today.
- Boomer rating: Under the Edge.
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boomers@boomersontheedge.com
Hey, and welcome to Boomers on the Edge. Some guys in their 60s. Who still think they're 60? Your host, Kevin and Ron. Let's get started. Hey, hey, I know where this song I heard. I know where I heard this song before. I don't know how they got away with putting this on the royalty free music. Yeah, but public domain. Yeah, it must be.
SPEAKER_00But I don't I remember that this was uh one of the songs in Animal House? Yeah. Yeah, and what was Animal House? You know, where did it take place? It took place in college. And we're approaching, you know, the time of year where people are starting to buy stuff to go back to their dorms or go to their dorms for the first time. Yeah. And uh, so we were gonna talk about college today and going to college and how things have changed a little bit since you know, when we went to college.
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00So I I came across an argument. You think things are different? I think they are. So you be the judge of it. And um I was pretty surprised by this. So you saw this in one of your uh is this in your smart news? Yeah, smart news, I believe, was you're correct. Um, for the people that are smart at U of M. Okay. Uh, I believe that's referring to the University of Michigan. If you say so, I went to the other school. It said that U of M is going to institute a pass or fail grade for the first and most students starting in the fall of 2027. And their goal, as they stated, was to help first-year students acclimate to the demands of college and allow intrinsic motivations to guide personally. Intrinsic motivations. Yeah.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00To guide personally meaningful academic journeys. What do you think about that?
SPEAKER_01I think it's a bunch of BS, but it does sound kind of like a bunch of BS, and hopefully that helps their grade points.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Right?
SPEAKER_01Do you remember grade points when you were in school?
SPEAKER_00I do in high school. High school and college? Well, high school for sure. Um, because you know, I wanted to get a scholarship if I could.
SPEAKER_01I I, you know, I don't I don't remember wanting to go home and tell my parents if I didn't get good grades. That's for sure. Yeah, I don't think your dad would have liked that. No, no, no. Especially your dad. I don't think there was any spanking or anything like that, but uh it wasn't good.
SPEAKER_00No, it wouldn't have been good. I didn't even want to have bad grades around your dad. To this day, you know. I don't. I don't. And um so at my house, yeah, I mean, our parents try to motivate us to get good grades with money. Okay, so instead of the stick they gave the carrot. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so you know, if we got an A, it was a dollar. If you got a B, it was fifty cents. Okay. Nothing for C D C's, D's or E's. Okay. Well you better not come home with a D or an E. Uh-oh. But there was always that, you know, you always got an alpha numeric grade. And the alpha was the grade, of course, for the schoolwork. Yeah. And the numeric was what?
SPEAKER_01Well, that's supposed to be for like whatever they called it, citizenship. Citizenship. Basically was how you were acting, I guess, in class.
SPEAKER_00And so it was a one through four rating, if you remember. Yeah. And one being the best. Yes. I thought mostly just girls got that. Yeah. Well, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01And then yeah, you don't think you and I we did not think about it. I don't think you and I, because generally, if you were a talker, you weren't gonna get the one. Which, yeah, we might have been in that range. Yeah. In that possible group. And uh boy, when they put us together in class, that was yeah, there was some trouble there.
SPEAKER_00That was interesting. Yeah, but a four, my mom would have nothing to do with me getting a four. You were getting fours? My mom said, Hey, I'm getting a little sick and tired of you bringing home these fours, you know. But it was an A, Mom. I go, my exactly. That sounds like Ron had the same program. Mom, it was an A4. And she goes, I don't care. She's she says, you know what? She instituted a fine. Uh-oh. She said, from now on, if you come home with an A4, she says, I'm gonna give you your dollar for your A. She says, but you're paying me two dollars for a four. Uh-oh. So then I had to go in search of where was that down a buck. I'm down a buck, yeah. And then I had to go I can even do that, man. Yeah, there you go. And yeah. Wow. When it came to the I got news for you.
SPEAKER_01I got news for you. You like to make fun of me on how I was in the math class on this show? When it came to money, you were good. When I was out in the real working world, there was no math wrong there. I can tell you that. Yeah, yep.
SPEAKER_00But, anyways, yeah, I could be down a buck, I'd get an A4. So it was kind of hard to find that little threshold between a three and a four. Because then after that, I started to bring it home.
SPEAKER_01I don't remember what I was to be honest with you. I don't remember if I was getting a I wasn't getting a one, no. Sometimes I did, but but I I think most of the time I was getting a two, three, four, like you're saying, but I don't remember what I got. Um I know my parents were kind of of the uh attitude like he's a talker, what are you gonna do about it?
SPEAKER_00Well, my parents just didn't want uh me to come home with a four, but I felt, and I explained this to him one time, I said, Mom, if I'm doing the work and I can get an A, then I should be able to do whatever else I want to do in class.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Right. Like, does anybody ask you what your what your uh citizenship point average is?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a good thing. It's a good thing I didn't have to.
SPEAKER_01I'm getting a I'm getting an would it be a a two-point average for my citizenship?
SPEAKER_00Good thing. Maybe they do that today, I don't know. But it's a good thing.
SPEAKER_01Well, you just told me at at uh University of Michigan they're gonna just give them pass fail. Exactly. Well, in the first semester.
SPEAKER_00Well, I don't in college you don't get a citizenship. Yeah. Well, talking about college, you know, yeah. Well, I went, I commuted to a local college, you know, Wayne State, downtown Detroit. But you went away to school. Where did you go? Your alma mater?
SPEAKER_01Michigan State, we've said that. Go Green, right? Go Green.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Spartans. And um, so when you were there, did you need help to acclimate to the demands of college and allow intrinsic motivations to guide personally meaningful academic your personally academic meaningful academic journey? Can't even talk. But U of M is interesting.
SPEAKER_01No, there was no there. I wasn't we we were all jumping right in.
SPEAKER_00I I distinctly remember you telling me about the first couple of semesters. It was fantastic. I was like, it was like Animal House.
SPEAKER_01It was, and uh in fact, one of my first memories in Michigan State was going up actually with our buddy John to go see his brother Jeff. Johnny J. And uh, I was before I went to Michigan State, and these guys were jamming Earth, Wind, and Fire so loud. Oh, and that's a great that is one of the greatest dance. You get they're fantastic, and they're playing that uh September the uh live album, yeah, and it's just jamming and everybody's dancing. And in those days, the bigger stereo the better, man. Oh, I was just gonna say that.
SPEAKER_00And those guys had really good stereo equipment.
SPEAKER_01And you, I'm telling you what, we parked the car, we're not even in the building, and we can hear it. So good times, and then uh my freshman year was legal 18 years old for drinking on campus. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and there was a lot of people that grew up in homes where their parents were very strict. Oh god, yeah. But it was that strictness, like, did it you know come stay, you know, strict? Did were the kids personally strictly strict with themselves?
SPEAKER_01I think the kids who they made the strictest went to stupid it went craziest. Okay. Oh yeah. You saw it. And and and what I was gonna say is I was telling uh a couple college-age uh guys that had just graduated from college when I before I retired, uh, they could hardly believe this. That in Michigan in that year in uh 77, yes, we were 18. And legal. We were legal, but then I think they took a two years later, or a year later, maybe even a year later, I can't remember when, they booked it up. In that same year. Yeah, so like I was legal and then I wasn't legal.
SPEAKER_00No, we were we were legal at 18? Yeah, 19, then they took it away at 19. That was it, okay. And then we got to be legal at 21.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we got to be legal three times. So I got to see the campus with uh legal drinking on it at 18. At 18, and then not at 20.
SPEAKER_00And I'm sure crazy. I'm sure if there was a kid at school that he was only 17, he probably would not have drank one drop of alcohol. Right? Because it it was nuts, and I'm not a big drinker, but it was just crazy. Well, he was in his first year, you know, acclimating to the demands of college and allowing intrinsic motivations to guide them personally meaningful academic journey. That's what they're doing now. That's what they're doing now. The first semester.
SPEAKER_01You know, I mean, that's because half of these kids' first girlfriend or boyfriend was Chat GPT. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. They they were really into their Yeah. So I mean, they gotta teach them how to even meet the opposite sex, I think. Because they're into their social media. They've never met one before.
SPEAKER_00I'm supposed to talk to these ladies, really. You gotta talk about it.
SPEAKER_01That's what I'm told. Oh, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Can we just email? Text can we just text? Can we just uh why don't we text each other? Exactly. Well, from that respect, you know, I'm kind of happy the way we went through our first years of college. Yeah, absolutely. And not this acclamation stuff, yeah.
SPEAKER_01No, no, college was a good time. Uh, you know, some kids on the serious side of this conversation, some kids lost it a little too much and couldn't handle being, you know, that free. Yeah. You know, they they didn't make it, they they dropped out. But overall, you know, you you had to learn how to, you know, be a mature, you know, yeah, be a mature adult and and know when to do the right things and when uh you know any parties uh or not party, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but when I just to kind of wrap this thing up, uh when I read the the story here, this article at U of M, I thought, wow, how did we get here? Number one. And two, uh I thought about you at Michigan State and some of your stories and John's stories, and I thought I think the way we went through it during our time was probably it was better.
SPEAKER_01I think a lot of this is uh parents have coddled kids a lot and and then participation trophy. Participation trophies and then it's like a natural outcome of it. And then combine that with social media and not having a lot of interaction face to face. It must be an interesting time for these kids to go to school nowadays because they're not really I I suspect they're not ready. And we can't relate to that.
SPEAKER_00No, not at all. I uh not at all. Hey, you guys, I don't know where we're going with that, what point we're gonna make, but we just wanted to point out the differences between then and and now. And uh thanks for listening.
SPEAKER_01Hey, thanks for joining us here on Boomers on the Edge. We hope you'll join us again. And until then, have a great time. Thank you.