I was on a cruise last week with a bunch of GenXers! Now, I realize that I am solidly a GenX, but I still think that besides the Greatest Generation, those who fought in WWII, we are the best. We definitely had the best music and the best technological advancements.
GenX is the generation born to the Boomers, from 1965 – 1980, and there are a number of things that make us unique. We’ve been called “feral”; we’ve been called the FAFO (“Fuck Around and Find Out”) Generation, and we’ve been left off of numerous infographics that show the generations, forgotten… as if we’d never existed. I had friends who seemed to have been forgotten by their own parents! I never was, but oh, how I longed for that level of freedom! Even the television asked at 10 PM every night if whoever was watching knew where their kids were!
So, what makes us unique? We were the first generation that in general, either both parents worked outside of the home, or we were children of divorce because of the new “no fault” divorce laws that sprung up around the country. Before we came along, Mom was usually at home when you came home from school. After the civil rights and feminist movements of the late 60’s and early 70’s, it became not just acceptable, but necessary, for women to work outside the home. Plus, does anyone honestly think that our bra-burning, pioneering mothers actually wanted to be stuck at home with a kid?!
So, as soon as we became old enough to know our address, off they went… to stores, offices, and factories, and we became responsible to care for ourselves and any younger brothers and sisters. We wore our house keys around our necks on shoelaces so we didn’t lose them, but half the time, the house was unlocked anyway. It was no longer the norm for kids to go rushing home for dinner when they saw Dad’s car pull into the driveway; nope, now it was, “Go outside and play and don’t come home until the streetlights come on!” We turned 30 at age ten, and we’re still 30 forty years later.
We learned how to be okay being alone, and it didn’t really bother us, but we also learned how to meet friends. After all, we didn’t have play dates or Mommy and Me classes where we could set eyes on other little people. We had to go out into the wild if we wanted to have any friends. We also had to develop a sixth sense about the people around us, so most of us could identify a threat a mile away… at least if they were a stranger. Back then, we were always told not to talk to strangers. Who knew that for many people, the threat was lurking somewhere inside their circle: a teacher, a minister, an uncle, or even a sibling?! Of course, Stranger Danger was, and still is, an important lesson to know, but we all know so much more now than we did then. All that said, we were independent kids.
Many of us walked to school, even in the early years. We drank water from the hose, never wore sunscreen, had metal fillings, could read a paper map, did our research in the World Book Encyclopedia set that our parents bought from a traveling salesman, got spanked with a belt when we did something wrong, rode on a parent’s lap in the car or in the bed of a truck without any restraints at all, played on playgrounds that had no seatbelts or plastic or rubber floors, roller skated and rode bikes without helmets and knee pads all the time, and still remember phone numbers with abandon. We even shot BB guns without ear protection and safety glasses. In short, we were tough kids.
We were the first generation to use the internet, to own cell phones, to have cable tv, to have cassettes and then CDs, to have home computers and video game systems (Pong, anyone?), the first to watch music come alive in video form with the advent of MTV, used the 911 system, watch the first successful space shuttle flight and then watch the Challenger explosion five years later, and the first to rip up a perfectly good pair of jeans. In short, we were adaptable kids.
I remember my dad had a shirt once that said, “Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill.” I think about it now, and I realize that for us, nothing could be more true. Many of us have gone the exact opposite of our parents when it came to parenting – we became helicopter parents – those parents who are so involved with their children’s lives that they are almost intrusive, but still a great many of us became the wolves – those who are raising our kids in a free-range home. In other words, we give them just enough rope to hang themselves, but we are there to catch them when they do.
As GenX, we called it being “raised by wolves”, and our ferality has been a good thing for most of us because we always manage to land on our feet when life tries to knock us down. We can literally make a feast out of ketchup and Ramen noodles and build a bed at the same time. We can go out into the wild and find each other, pretty much anywhere, because we are the ones who learned to make friends early on. Having been with well over a thousand GenXers like me for a week was a trip down memory lane with friends I’d just met, and it was a blast. Yes, we will do anything… but we won’t do that. If you know, you know, and if you don’t, go find a World Book ‘M’ and look up “Meatloaf”. In the meantime, I’m going to go build a blanket fort and throw lawn darts at the neighbors!
