My husband turned 40 this year. Almost before he could bite into a slice of cake several Baby Boomers of our acquaintance made comments that he was "just a kid" and "still a pup".
With all the articles this New Year's about Baby Boomers turning 65, it got me thinking about those of us at Culture Brats. We the self-dubbed 80s kids. We fit squarely in the Generation X category, the generation born after the Baby Boomers between the years 1965 to 1980 (time spans vary by resource). Out of curiosity I did some research into what the media says about Generation X. I mean, I know what they said when we were all first branded with the term in our youth ("slacker", which I for one didn't particularly appreciate considering I was working my way through college), but what were they saying now?
What I found was baffling and almost laughable. "Slacker", "anxious", "ignored", "lost", and "middle child syndrome" were terms, in recent articles, I saw pop up! Still! As if we were a group of particularly troubling teens instead of adults approaching middle age.
I remember the furious speculation when the Gen X label first started floating around about how our generation wasn't going to get very far because of our slackerly and disaffected attitudes. We didn't take anything seriously, you know, angrily drinking coffee in plaid shirts (you'd be angry, too, if you had to wrestle that coffee into a shirt). Granted, there are many of us who still enjoy a good cynical joke with a side of smartass (go Culture Brats!), but those speculations are 20 years old now. Why are still getting saddled today with labels usually associated with children?
Has it all been thrust upon us by the media or is there some part of us that still feels like Reality Bites has just been extended into mortgage payments?
Frankly, raising my child and paying bills I gotta tell ya... I feel like a grownup.
So for today's Your Say Hump Day I want to know... how do you define yourself? Adult or kid? Youthful or middle-aged? Generation X or something else entirely?
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