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Thursday, May 9, 2013

I am Generation X

I am Generation X.


We are those who were born in the 70's,

raised in the 80's,

and came into our own in the 90's.

Our parents were baby-boomers, and many of us now have children of our own. 

We remember Saturday Morning Cartoons like the Smurfs, Hulk Hoagan's Rock n' Wrestling, the Pac Man adventure hour, the Gummi Bears, and Dungeons & Dragons.

We remember weekday morning and afternoon cartoons like G.I. Joe, The Transformers, Thundercats, He-Man, She-Ra, Mask, Speed Racer, and Robotech. We remember these things before they were remade for a new era with new sensibilities.

We remember when Megatron was a Walther P38 instead of a jet or tank. We remember playing war with toy guns and none of us grew up to shoot up our schools (For the record, Harris and Klebold were Gen Y). We played Assassins in high school and nobody called it a "Dangerous game."

We were the first generation to have Dungeons & Dragons and were the consumers responsible for launching the modern role playing industry.

We remember when the woods were a safe place to play.

If we got bullied in school, a playground fist fight usually settled the case, and nobody went to prison or court for assault.

We didn't get expelled from school for having G.I. Joe toys or making gun shapes with our hands.

We remember a black-and-white, dark and gritty Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as well as a brightly-colored pizza-eating cartoon version.

We were defined by Star Trek and Star Wars. We watched Knight Rider, The Incredible Hulk, The Dukes of Hazzard, Grizzly Adams, V, The Cosby Show, Cheers, and Night Court.

We ate dinner in front of the TV. With our families, be they one- or two-parent homes.

We were latch-key kids whose parents both worked, and nobody got arrested because we were home alone for a few hours in the afternoon.

We think The Lost Boys and Near Dark were two of the greatest vampire films ever made.

We had E.T., Indiana Jones, The Last Starfighter, Conan the Barbarian, The Goonies, and Back to the Future.

Films like Dream a Little Dream, Clerks, Chasing Amy, Waiting..., High Fidelity, Pump Up the Volume, Say Anything, The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire, or Reality Bites resonated with us on a deep and fundamental level and told us that other people knew what our lives felt like.

We hung out at the mall as teens and at dimly-lit coffeehouses as young adults.

We smoked cigarettes and weed, which was the inexpensive drug you could grow with a sun lamp in your basement, and nobody died from it.

We lamented how dead of a decade the Clinton 90's were, but look back now with nostalgia on those days, and only now realize what a decade of quiet progress it was.

We felt like we had no heroes and nobody to look up to. We were so desperate for a

We spawned the celebrity voyeur culture and reality TV. You're welcome.

We could've changed the world for the better. Instead, we've made it more divisive than it ever before has been. Good work, folks.

We embraced heavy metal, then killed it and replaced it with grunge. 

Our social network was the mall instead of street corners and smart phones.

We didn't ram our politics down each others' throats.

We went to school to get good jobs doing things with our lives that we wanted to do. We looked for fulfillment. We appreciated music, art, and books, and didn't steal them (as a rule) off the shelves at stores, only to justify it as "sticking it to the man," or "information should be free." We recognized the rights of artists to make a living from their talents.

We were proud to be American and for the most part, the world respected us.

And yet, now we do all those things we never did before, in spades.

And yet, the world we have now...is all our fault.

You're welcome.

1 comment:

  1. Also, if you plan to comment here to pick nits about how something I wrote above didn't apply to you? You've missed the point and I politely invite you to piss off as a result.

    ReplyDelete


Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom, and Mary Magdalene.

I'm not a mad bible thumper--Sophia, however, is my inspiration and always in my heart