My Gen-X Files - An Intro

For a few years, I had an idea about writing something to my fellow Gen Xers.  I thought about a love letter of sorts, just to pinpoint who we really were and yes, we did exist and did some shit. But it never coalesced into anything I could put a spin on. Instead of that, I’m putting together a little series of posts that detail what a few specific experiences were like that aren’t around anymore.  They either belonged in the 1980s or that decade served as their last gasp.  I hope to refrain from too many old-manism’s, and just relay the historical facts in an interesting way.

            Those will be coming over the next few weeks.

            Alright, Jim.  Get to it already.

            I do this because Generation X has already become an overlooked generation.  Our parents, (Boomers) and our children (Millennials) are larger groups. The cultural landscape consists of Millennials and Boomers bitching at each other and I rarely hear the voice of Gen X in the fray.  I have my theory.  Wanna know what it is?  (Boomers, you might want to skip ahead a paragraph or two.)

            The Baby Boomers, specifically the post-WWII generation of people born from 1946 to roughly 1960 or so, are the most self-involved, egotistical human beings to ever walk the Earth.  Period.  Everything about their existence has been about them and them only, with no true reverence for their parents and a monstrous disdain for anyone with the nerve to be born after them.  They dream of being eternally young and relevant, they created a disposable culture that aims to make a fast buck at the expense of tomorrow and they are bitter as hell that Mother Nature dictates that they have to grow old and die.

            Then there’s me and my friends. Their kids. Generation X.  X, as in a lack of identity or purpose. It’s difficult for me to describe my generation without coloring it with my own experience.  But I’ll take a crack at it.

            I don’t know a whole bunch of my brethren whose parents weren’t divorced at least once. That’s not a character flaw, although it does set the table for an American generation left on their own a lot.  A lot. Factor in the economy and you have kids raised by a single parent, or by two parents who had to work to survive.  That situation does not dictate failure or a child without any hope, but it sure as hell doesn’t help.  Also, this was still a time when America didn’t really give shit about kids. 

            Wait, what?

            Yes.  My theory is, America didn’t start giving a shit about kids until about 1992.

            Of course, we over-corrected as we often do. But child safety, education reform, child fitness and nutrition, protective services to rescue kids from violence in the home, and a hundred other cultural adaptations, (some of them to market products to kids, too) didn’t really gain ground until the 1990s.  Just in time for Gen X to be too old to benefit from it.

             We were on our own, fending for ourselves and scraping together life lessons where we could.  A lot of us had no parental involvement to guide us and those of us with parents felt secondary. Boomers overshadowed every corner of our lives. They co-opted anything Gen-X spawned and put it into commercials and cereal box toys just as their parents did in the 1960s.  Thirtysomething wasn’t just a show, it was the cultural complaint that Boomers weren’t cool anymore and they had to grow up.  And to that, they said: Fuck that!  I’m getting plastic surgery, a personal trainer and I’m fully knowledgeable of all the hip songs on the radio.  Right kids?  I’m cool, right?

I remember my grandmother referred to all music made after 1950 as ‘disco’.  She was of the WWII generation and didn’t give a fuck.  I can’t imagine my grandparents wanting to grow their hair long and listen to CCR on the hi-fi in the basement like their kids.  They didn’t care.  They grew old.  Boomers couldn’t, and can’t, give it up. There was a string of hit songs in the 1980s that were about how much better the 1960s were.  I mean, they weren’t about fire-hosing black protestors or how the wealthier white kids dodged the draft, but I guess they just wrote about the fun stuff.

Gen-X was a reminder of their mortality.  We knew it.  We felt it. It was part of us.

            So, when Gen-Xers had kids, we decided to be honest with them and love them. An era of ditching loyalty at work to loyalty to your family took root, and Millennials soon had an entire culture nurturing them at every turn.  At school, at home, on TV, at the movies, on the playground.  They were kinder and nicer.   

            But they are human beings, so something had to go wrong.

            Childhood was so nice they didn’t want to leave.  They didn’t want to make decisions and the world they saw was either just as bad as their parents honestly described, or a shock to their system because they were ill-prepared.  They saw a world absorbed by greed and materialism and they rightfully rejected it.  However, instead of fighting to change it, they retreated.  Gen X parents didn’t see that coming.  Theirs was a world of self-preservation. No one was going to help them survive so they had to cobble together a life as best as they could.  They raised their kids with tools to be less bitter and miserable.  We could not predict the internet and an Age of Apathy and Self-Righteousness.

            We also didn’t know the Boomers would still have a stranglehold on our world.  They keep working and taking instead of retiring and moving on for the next generation. Now they bitch about their grandkids and how they don’t have a work ethic or they’re too soft. 

            They complain about their grandkids. Gen X doesn’t even get mentioned in the whining and bleating.  I grew up feeling invisible and I tend to extend that to my generation, but I don’t think I’m that far off. The 80s were a plastic, fake decade with little substance to be found in the standard media fare.  People like to point out hip-hop and alternative rock were born then, traditionally with more substantive lyrics, but it wasn’t where your regular Gen-Xer could find it.  I mean, I found it eventually.  In the 90s.

            Whew!  That part’s over.

            Wait, where was I?  Oh, yeah.  My generation.

            I put together a few cultural experiences and wrote them out as I experienced them.  I keep getting reminded that all of this writing stuff I do should be a way to the truth.  Our truths are subject to the windows in our lives; what we can see while we are purposely looking through them.  I just want my generation to have a few more recorded accounts before we are forgotten forever.

            See you next week.