Generation X: People of a certain age who are reluctantly connected
by a world of ideas at a peculiar time and place in American history.
That is to say, older and younger people never knew what to say about us. We kept getting all these contrary labels. What's more, they didn't know how to INSULT us. We'd seen a lot of shit. We were like, "Yeah, whatever."
I think of members of Gen X as Low Budget Superheroes. We were raised in the blighted world of the 1970s, for cryin’ out loud. Even if your family had money, you were still trapped in the 1970s. Pollution. Gas lines.Three TV channels. Plus PBS of course. Sesame Street, Electric Company, Schoolhouse Rock.
The average American Gen Xer went from analog to digital to virtual and AI in a blur of just fifty-odd weird-ass years. Our childhood science fiction eventually morphed into science fact, and I think we deserve some freakin' credit for taking it all in stride. In fact, we are pioneers.
To Generation X, technology advancing rapidly is comforting. We have been at the center of it. We had a big hand in building the cloud, and if not directly then indirectly by adopting it, and adapting as it all evolved. Remember early internet in the 90s? Dial-up? Those AOL CDs that came in the mail? If you ever popped one of those things into your 256MB PC, or had an AOL AIM account, you were part of building the cloud, too.
Personally my role was more direct. I worked in telecommunications after college. I have stories from various cubicles throughout the 1990s, when Developers stood in front of a room, a drawing of a cloud on a PowerPoint, talking LANs and VPNs and Backbone Concentrater Nodes. We were building it. And it was thrilling. My parents didn’t get it yet, only understanding that Michelle “worked with computers.” My mom eventually came around. I remember when she first used an ATM. Now she has a smart phone and streams her music through Sonos.
There's something comforting in that shared experience of taking a flying leap across a great evolutionary chasm, from childhood when our highest-tech toy was an Etch-A-Sketch to the very first iPads to smart watches and the Internet of Things. We skated from wall-tethered telephones that served an entire family, to everyone having a smart phone, even our kids. Could we have conceived such a thing as a smart phone? How old were YOU when you first got rights to partake of that analog twisty corded phone? I bet you remember what room it was in, what color it was. Waiting until after 7pm for the rates to go down. Stretching the cord into oblivion trying to get some privacy.
We shared the experience of our technology, our sports, our toys, our board games, our video games, our music, our TV shows and movies. TV shows aired once a week...if you missed it, you missed it. We lived for summer reruns. Movies showed in the THEATER, for a certain number of weeks or months, then that was it. They were gone. The first VCRs weren't affordable until the mid-1980s. My parents found a floor model at some place in New Haven.
And the way we listened to music! My first record was a 45–Barry Manilow’s “Mandy.” The B-side was “Something’s Comin’ Up.” I played it on my little pink and white turntable. There were also 8-Track tapes, which we played on our 2XL robot. Then there were boom boxes and cassettes. There was the Sony Walkman…rewinding the cassette…searching for the song we wanted…oof. Then CDs. The first CD I ever laid eyes on was Joshua Tree (U2) on the kitchen counter at my mom’s friend’s place. They had money. Well, her dad had money, she didn’t do anything. That was high school.
It felt like we grew up awfully fast.
When we were kids, we’d stay out all damn day. I remember playing with the kids up the street for hours on end. Our parents had no idea where we were, who we were with, or what we were up to. We have stories. Today? Kids are watched every single minute. A lot of us came home from school to an empty house. They called us “Latchkey Kids.” Okay, but seriously, should I have been in charge? I was twelve.
Yeah, technology and everything else evolved fast these past fifty-ish years, and Gen X evolved with it. We climbed the mountain, we surfed the wave, we sped along the information superhighway with all the windows open. We optimized for mobile like champs. Ours was a triumphant grand jete across the great generational divide, and I tell ya, we're doing a pretty good job.
I have been keeping Diary of a Low Budget Superhero for over 25 years, If you didn't know, that's years before the word "blog" was coined. The intent back in 2000 was to see, after a lot of years of writing the blog, how an ordinary Gen Xer had it all turn out in the end.
I guess we'll see.
We're in our forties, but it's my personal opinion that Gen X doesn't age like our forbears did. Ours is a noble rot, like a fine wine. and Gen X still has something to say.🗣
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