Living The GenX Dream...

Ok, if you are anywhere from 46-61, you are generally considered part of the GenerationX crowd.

What does this mean, you ask? Let’s just say it was different when we were kids. See, when I was a kid, there were like four TV channels, and there was no remote control; we also only had one TV. Since there were very few choices of what to watch, you would watch whatever was coming on at whatever time it came on, with commercial breaks. 

TV was one of my favorite babysitters that I had a close, intimate relationship with when I was a kid. I was over cartoons by the time I was eight. I would watch soap operas when I was nine. I had no idea what love was, but I sure as hell knew it caused some serious drama. I used to watch talk shows like Oprah and Geraldo. I learned from them what drag queens were, and I learned what incest was at a very young age from these shows. I learned things I was too young to understand, but it did open my mind. 

If you are part of GenX, you likely spent some time in daycare. I grew up in daycare at Livionia Little Tots. It was inside a Baptist church, but luckily for me, they didn’t push Jesus on us. I’m a Sikh, and it is against my religion to cut my hair. When I was like six, I decided to cut my hair myself, and when my mom found out, I told her Vernon, the kid who got in trouble all the time, cut my hair without my permission. 

Ms. Gina, the teacher at the daycare, asked me if I felt it when he cut my hair. I said no. She said you always feel it when someone is cutting your hair. She asked Vernon if he did it, and he totally denied it to the point where he was like, yes I did start that fire in the bathroom, but I did not cut that bitch’s hair. Everyone figured out I had cut my own hair; later, as an adult, I would cut it for good.  

If you are part of GenX, it is likely you respect your religion but don’t really practice it. When I was a kid, Madonna was my favorite rock star. Back in the day, there weren’t like a million music choices; there were pop stars, and everyone listened to them. Stars like Michael Jackson and bands like Bon Jovi. 

When I was in grade school, I walked to school; it was kind of a far walk. No adult accompanied me; I just walked with my friends, and my parents only drove me to school if there was some severe weather going on. Nowadays, I see parents walking their kids to the bus stop. It’s such a different world. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why we are raising weak little brats. 

We are the last generation that used a landline, a phone that was huge and couldn’t be moved.

Image courtesy of Ugur Peker via Scopio

We are probably the last generation that learned how to write in cursive.

I remember when computers first came out. Do you remember floppy disks?

I vaguely remember taking a computer programming class in middle school. I had a boy do my homework because I never got it.

MTV was invented before my very eyes, and I would watch it for hours on end. I remember I was twelve when we got cable; it was the greatest invention of that time. All of a sudden, there were so many channels, it was amazing! By the time I was twelve, I didn’t need a babysitter and watched my little sister.

We watched all the Molly Ringwald movies like The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Sixteen Candles over and over again. We couldn’t wait to start high school and be cool like the kids in those movies. 21 Jump Street was my favorite show. I would videotape it every week and watch the episodes over and over. Johnny Depp was my first celebrity crush.

The VCR was another great invention.

When I actually got to high school, I realized I was not cool enough to be one of the popular kids. I hung out with the nerds and alternative crowd. I wasn’t exactly smart enough to be a nerd, and I wasn’t unique enough to be alternative, but I managed.

When I was a freshman in high school, I went through some kind of religious phase and would listen to prayers, and I was pro-life. Very soon, that all changed, and I became a die-hard liberal feminist. I was spiritual from then on instead of religious, but I always had deep respect for my religion. 

There were many Indians in my high school, and that is when I started to have pride in my Indian roots. I wrote for the high school newspaper and filled it with my liberal and spiritual ideas. They called me the metaphysical vegetarian. I was even a vegetarian back then.

I tried really hard to convince my boomer Republican parents to become liberals. They eventually did, but I don’t really think I can take full credit for that transformation. They really liked Bill Clinton. They would later grow to love Obama.  

I remember when I was a freshman in college, I got my first email account. I didn’t think much of computers back then; I basically just used them to write papers. I don’t remember discovering the power of the internet. I wasn’t really into it, even though it was becoming all the rage. I still liked books better. 

I was never surfing the internet or talking to boys with these weird IM servers that my friends were using. I wasn’t as amazed by the internet as I was by cable TV. I really discovered the internet after I graduated from college. I was a temp in Washington, D.C. I was working for USA Today, and like an idiot, I was so bored with my secretary job that I discovered internet porn.

I know, I know, I had no idea people that I worked for could see what websites I was visiting. Anyways, I got fired, and rightfully so. The funny thing is, after discovering internet porn, I never got into that either.

I’m not a computer/technological person, but I remember when I got my first cellphone. It was a flip phone, and I was so excited. I really didn’t use my phone for anything besides making phone calls; I don’t even know if I knew how to text.   

When I went to grad school, everyone in school was communicating through email except me. I didn’t check my email, ever. Even the professors were emailing us. I don’t know why I was so late to this game, but I was. I got my first laptop in my second year of grad school and exclusively used it to write.

It was only many years later that I actually started surfing the interwebs. When I got a smartphone, I was very excited that I could go on the internet on my phone. I guess the wave of the future is AI. I again remain unperturbed by this new craze. Call me a Luddite, but honestly, technology doesn’t impress me that much. One thing I think is cool is streaming services like Netflix, but that’s about as deep as it gets for me. 

My grandfather lived to the age of ninety-eight; he saw from a bicycle to the first rocket. In my generation, we have seen technology really get ahead of us. So much so that it feels like AI could take over the world, not in a good way. If you are part of GenX, you are probably hoping AI doesn’t take your job before it’s time to retire.

We GenX folks are getting closer to old age, and we don’t like it one bit. The boomers didn’t leave a good economy for us to thrive in, and the boomers in government make us want to leave the country when we retire. We are more than happy to give our jobs to Millennials since all we really want to do in life is retire, but we aren’t rich enough to do that, and we fear we never will be.

We are the generation sandwiched between the old timers and the new modern generation of people who have less nostalgia for a better time. Maybe things weren’t better when we were kids, but we played more outside, didn’t have screen time, and were actually afraid of our parents. We didn’t have all the information in the world at our fingertips; we used libraries instead of Google.

We are definitely from a different time, and we cherish those memories.

nina

2 Curries and a Ranch Podcast: Indian is an Arctic Freeze, Apple:  https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1874627207 Or find it wherever you get your podcasts. Sit with us for a humorous and interesting discussion about the severe cold weather!