A moment of ironic notoriety, amid COVID-19

My fellow Gen Xers hello there! Circa 74 here; it was a vintage year. Full bodied. Oaky. Top notes of vanilla. Granted, its more palatable once you look past the oil crisis, the college campus trend of streaking, and the culmination of Watergate ending with President Nixons resignation a mere month after I was born. But there were nuggets of perfection, too. Like the continued success of All in the Family, a groundbreaking and important TV show I didnt come to fully appreciate until I was an adult, of course.

So anyway. Here we are. How you holding up? Howre you fairing, my fellow lost generation pals, during this global pandemic that has us on lock-down, sort of like a virtual house arrest?

Whats that? Youre doing just fine, thankyouverymuch? Funny; I kinda thought so. Me too!

After all, I think we may be the only generation who doesnt have any problem whatsoever with staying the eff at home to ride out this unprecedented global pandemic. Social distancing? Shelter at home? We were made for this sh*t. Though the summertimes of our collective childhood were spent outdoors til the street lights came on, during the school year, we all knew that latchkey kid translated to shelter at home.

So I say again: Gen X was made for this sh*t.

We were the kids who went from having a Carol Brady mom figure at home, to having two yuppy, full-time professional working parents seemingly overnight. There were no family meetings or pep talks to prepare us for this; it just happened whether we liked it or not (feelings be damned!)

Were the ones who were forced to grow up with self-reliance before we were even ready for it. Were the ones who went straight from the comfort of Moms fresh baked cookies served hot after school, to whiling away afternoons however we saw fit hours upon hours spent at home (or elsewhere) with little to no parental oversight.

We werent forced to have playdates or attend extra-curricular enrichment activities. Our babysitters consisted of MTV and Oprah Winfrey.

As latchkey kids, we had to entertain and protect ourselves when we werent quite old enough, and nourish ourselves before we could properly cook. Which meant meals of bologna sandwiches, if we were feeling responsible. Otherwise, it was Nabisco snack classics straight out of the box, like Tid-Bits or Doo-Dads (personally, I preferred combining the two). Maybe Jello pudding pops for dessert, or a giant bowl of Fruit Loops eaten on the carpeted floor, no more than 10 inches away from the TV screen.

Speaking of food, hell. Were the generation that could survive for days-on-end eating nothing but maybe a can of Planters Cheez Balls and a box of Fruit Corners Fruit Roll-Ups.

Gen X was totally made for this sh*t.

As for entertaining ourselves during this oddly familiar house arrest time? Well, that comes naturally for us Gen Xers.

Hunkering down with days-worth of video games and mindless TV is like comfort food for our souls. Pure nostalgic bliss. Tuning out the entire world from beneath our (knockoff) Sony stereo headphones? Absolutely. Give us the chance to live in complete autonomy over our music intake (even if it is only the same 10 or 12 songs), and we will not disappoint. In fact, you might not know it, but these are exactly the things that Gen X does whenever we take off work for a mental health day.

As Gen Xers, we were the last generation to experience an old-school, hands-on, down & dirty, outdoor childhood that was led (or taught) by the Baby Boomers. We took what little we learned from the pull yourselves up by the bootstraps, kid mentality, and tossed out the rest.

Using paddles as a form of in-school discipline was slowly phasing out, but it was not so passe that teachers had lost respect (or was that fear that we felt?) Either way, they were able to control their classrooms by the sole presence of one. A worn-out, used paddle hanging on the classroom wall was a relic that served as both threat and badge of honor, while simultaneously reminding you that the game was all about power and control. And it was not fixed in your favor.

One teacher at my school was notorious for her hanging wood paddle because it also featured the signatures of each student scrawled out in Sharpie whod received a paddling at her hands.

When the materialism and corporate greed of the 80s fascinated the world at large, us Gen X kids didnt invest too much energy. We knew better, for we saw the rise and fall of many things in the span of just one decade. Technology that proved here today, gone tomorrow Sony cassette tape walkmans, and later, discmans; Kodak Disc cameras; VCRs, Betamax.

We withstood dot matrix printers, cumbersome telephone books and yellow pages, floppy disks, classroom overheard projectors, and other now obsolete technology and we werent phased by the coming and going of any of it.

We were made for this sh*t.

Were the generation who grew up weary of stranger danger but not until after having enjoyed at least a handful of more innocent years where we didnt know stranger danger.

That innocence was ripped away from us like everything else, seemingly overnight along with Adam Walsh, non-childproofed medicine containers as used in the Tylenol murders, and the ability to ever enjoy Halloween as kids again. (Allegations of razor blades found in apples and candy, and fearful mothers ensured that.) With at least a decade to go before the emergence of the internet and Snopes, how else were we supposed to quash urban legends?

Were the generation that lived through Reagan, and dear God, Reaganomics, which hollowed out the middle class:

When we had heavily regulated and taxed capitalism in the post-war era, the largest employer in America was General Motors, and they paid working people what would be, in todays dollars, about $50 an hour with benefits. Reagan began deregulating and cutting taxes on capitalism in 1981, and today, with more classical raw capitalism, what we call Reaganomics, or supply side economics, our nations largest employer is WalMart and they pay around $10 an hour.

Reaganomics killed Americas middle class, by Thom Hartmann

Gen X were born in the eras of Roe v. Wade, the Vietnam war, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, and the murder of John Lennon. We lived through the Challenger explosion as kids, and 9/11 as parents. Some of the shaping events of our generation were the end of the Cold War, the beginning of personal computing, and an overall Jan Brady feeling of being invisible. Or rather, lost. A tiny generation sandwiched between two considerably larger ones: the Boomers and Millennials.

We had to grow up during Nancy Reagans just say no campaign, and the this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs; any questions? commercials. Along with the crack epidemic and the ubiquitous war on drugs.

We survived the AIDS crisis, televangelists screaming against sodomy, and gay conversion therapy. We survived our parents shock and horror over MTV and gender-bending musicians like Boy George (Culture Club), Prince, Robert Smith (The Cure), David Bowie, and so many others. Oh and how could I forget Annie Lennox? To this day I can still remember a heated argument in 1984 with my Mom, whereby I tried (in vain) to convince her that Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics (who I was watching on TV) was indeed a woman.

No, honey, my Mom protested. Women dont have sideburns growing out of their heads like that. I gave up. It was a futile attempt to make her understand the wonders of stage makeup.

For many Gen Xers, including myself, music was our only connection to anything resembling an identity.

Unlike our parents, we survived (indeed, thrived) from attending diverse public schools. As we grew older we learned about mass incarceration especially of black men. With Anita Hills revolutionary testimony and the help of some third wave feminists, we Gen Xers were the precursor to the #MeToo movement (which, incidentally, was the inception and vision of a black woman named Tarana Burke, not Alyssa Milano).

Most of us occupy a new sandwich space: between caring for aging parents and caring for our own growing kids. On top of that, our generation currently carries the highest debt load, and are simultaneously trying to plan for our kids college years, and our own retirements. Were financially f*ked, for the most part. But not jaded. Sarcasm is our native language. And humor is a mighty fine coping mechanism; it has served us well through dark periods before.

Thanks to our distrust in authority figures and our tendency to question everything, were pretty good at fending for ourselves. Thats not to say we cant be useful or helpful when need be. Were also the ones who serve to bridge the gap between the non-tech-savvy Boomers and the digital native Gen Zers.

Were the only generation who introduced both our parents and our kids to Facebook which most respectable Gen Xers have now fled from, seeing as how its been completely overtaken by Boomers and now tends to be an endless void of hollow gestures and trends pushed by the subtle art of online peer pressure.

Gen Xers may have chased the millennials and Gen Z off Facebook before the Boomers ever thought to, but then Gen Z opened up a whole new world for us. They showed us all the fun stuff, like TikTok, and finsta accounts, and the now-defunct Vine. And its contagious. Even political leaders from Gen X have paved the way showing these diverse generations how to connect and engage with constituents via various social media outlets.

As Gen Xers, we may be small but were mighty. We were built to survive, were highly adaptable, and we know how to quietly seize the right opportunities in the right time. You might call us opportunistic survivors, kinda like rats or cockroaches or bottom feeders in the fish tank. (And you know, those creatures dont die off so easily.)

All in all, Gen Xers feel like we were handpicked and placed on Earth exactly for this type of important moment in history, when the world would depend on us to do our part by sheltering at home. It kinda feels like our whole lives have been leading up to this one point where our nation would, at long last, call upon us to do absolutely nothing. On that, we promise to deliver.

But. Dont call us slackers. Were not slackers. Thats purely myth. We just know how to relax properly.

Go here to read the rest:

Gen X Strong: An Ode To The Lost Generation In A Global Pandemic - Elemental