When my dad used to drop my friends and me off at the movies every week, he’d always tell us about the good ol’ days when admission to the movies was a nickel. He’d gasp every time he gave me three dollars to cover my $1.25 ticket and snacks. Every single week, he’d say the same exact thing.
Now that I’m older than 60% of the population, I get lumped into the “dumb old guy status” all the time. Twenty-somethings wearing European sport coats and skinny jeans assume I don’t have the newest apps. They speak to me slowly, and sympathetically… using words like “actually”, “epic”, and “literally” forty times per paragraph. I hate these people.
Generations do these things. The older generations talk about how great it used to be, and the younger generations dismiss their elders’ experience and wisdom. It’s just the way it is, and probably always will be. The cause of this dynamic is a unidirectional path of progress. As time passes, progress – good or bad – moves forward in one direction. Things the Baby Boomers thought were amazing are looked at by Millennials as archaic. Progress moves forward in one direction. Even though we might have safer, and more useful vehicles today, humans have always had some sort of transportation that seemed modern and cool at the time. It’s very rare that a phenomenon of human behavior stops and turns around, and then takes a different direction. Fashion comes and goes, but it’s cyclical and will always return. You’ll see knit ties and corduroy sport coats again within the next ten years – I promise. Almost nothing goes backward and then takes a new direction. Imagine consumers demanding 20-inch square-tubed televisions again, and then the TV market going in a completely different direction. It just doesn’t happen… except for a few things that Generation X kids experienced, and only they will ever experience.
I’m a Generation Xer. I was raised in the 1970s and 80s. I loved it, and love my memories. I watched things like personal computers, mobile phones, and space travel evolve and progress. No matter how much these things change in the future, generations will be blown away with the latest computing capabilities, mobile communication, and space exploration. The Baby Boomers and previous generations all witnessed with awe, things Gen-Xers thought were normal and boring; and we witnessed things that Generation Z snubs with “literally, whatever”. However, there are three things we experienced as Generation X kids that no other generation experienced before or after us. There may be some crossover, but for the most part, these three things are exclusive to the memories of my people…
1. We were the only generation of latchkey kids. Before our generation, mothers stayed home and raised their children. The ones that didn’t had neighboring moms take care of their kids after school. In the 1970s, it was common to have two working parents, and many didn’t have neighbors available to babysit. Kids started taking care of themselves after school. At the end of second grade, I started walking home from school, unlocking the door to our house, and taking care of myself until my parents got home. This went on until I left for college. It was normal. I’d call my mom at work, tell her I was safe, and go out and play before baseball/football/soccer practice at 5:00 or so.
Before Generation X kids, stay-at-home moms took care of their kids after school. After Generation X kids, parents have become afraid to leave their kids alone. Perhaps it’s paranoia; perhaps it’s valid; but either way, there is no way I’m letting my daughter walk home by herself and run the household until we get home. Nope, and it’s only going to evolve and grow in the same direction. Not sure how kids will be taken care of after school in 100 years, but I know that there will never be a generation of latchkey kids again.
2. Our generation of kids ate worse than any other. My parents’ generation was raised on eggs, vegetables, fruit, steak, chicken, etc. There wasn’t fast food or an abundance of processed foods. Then we came along, and the food business was booming. It was the race to the bottom – who could be fastest, cheapest, and stay on the shelf the longest? I ate McDonald’s, Twinkies, sugar disguised as cereal, gallons of soda, and hundreds of TV dinners. The ironic thing is that conventional wisdom in the 1980’s made fun of previous generations and their fatty diets. As it turns out, our grandparents ate much healthier than we did.
Even though we’re taking a hit for our terrible diets today, our kids are eating better than we did. The regress of nourishment has stopped, and changed direction. Nutritionists are telling us to eat what our grandparents fed us, not what our parents fed us. We’re heading in a direction where health is a primary factor in our food choices, and the market will follow. Yep – our parents and previous generation ate healthier than we did, and no other generation of kids will ever eat worse! (I have to admit that there is a sick sense of pride I have in writing that.)
3. No other generation of kids had more fun at swimming pools. I grew up in Florida, so most of my friends had pools. We didn’t, but that never bothered me because I had my choice of several pools every summer day. All of them had a springy diving board, and many had slides. Residential swimming pools were rare until the 1960s. Generations of kids before us Gen-Xers didn’t have the opportunity we had, unless they went to a hotel or public pool.
Fortunately for parents, today’s kids don’t know what a diving board is. When is the last time you saw one? I admit that I’m glad they’re gone because I don’t have to worry about my four-year-old playing in our pool today. If we had a diving board, I’d probably be out there constantly watching her. I have a three-inch scar on my head from 1978 that illustrates their danger.
Pools are still progressing in style and coolness, but sometime around 1990 they reversed and started over again without diving boards or slides. That’s ok – we had our fun, and no other group of kids will ever have as much fun at the pool as we did.
So, that’s it. Three things we experienced that no other generation before or after us will experience. Millennials might claim they had beepers, and that was unique. Nope, beepers were just another form of communication. Baby Boomers might say they had the passion and rebellion. Yep, you sure did, but rebellion is a cycle of social behavior that’s required every few generations – it’s happened before and will happen again. However, no other generation had or will have latchkey kids, eat as badly as we did (and survive), or have nearly as much fun as we had at the pool.
