Yoinked from ravensgrace

Miss Raven-Hair Rant-Queen (whose baby, I now hear, is officially Reality-Warpingly Adorable)
- Edit - stop panicking, there is no baby, this is an error, caused by late nights and having just talked to wildelven about Baby Maya
posted an essay on her LJ, and out of bored curiosity, I read it - and was floored.
There have been many "talkin' bout my generation" essays, for each successive buncha folks, of course. This one was the first that I felt really applied to me. Except for the younger-sibling part; my sister and I are very close in age, so that I feel we have pretty much the same generational identity. But I do have friends whose siblings are younger than them by five or ten years or more, and to whom I think the essay would be even more relevant. Also, I think I'm a bit younger than the essay's target audience - it was written about ten years ago, after all, and some of the pop culture references betray that (after all, we all traded backpacks for courier bags when the millenium hit) - but heebeezee and I are at the tail end of our generation anyway. Half Gen-Xers and half Gen Why-ers. Does that give us a male chromosome?

Here is Elizabeth Bear's
People Like Us

I belong to a generation frequently accused of cultural illiteracy, of a lack of history, of absolute apathy. I belong to the generation of the quotative "like" and the whiplash-inducing "Not!" I belong to the generation of infobahn, emoticon, and chill. I belong to the generation that refers to themselves as machines: "My parser was down." "Just a thinko." "Sorry, little trouble accessing today." "We're not connecting."

So let me tell you about my friends.

You can spot us on the streets: businesswear, headphones, and backpacks. Casualwear and backpacks. Studentwear and backpacks. Ragged cutoffs and backpacks. The one indisputable is the backpacks: we hauled them around all through high school and college and we're damned if we're gonna quit now. Like urban nomads, like giant snails, we carry our homes on our backs: plastic mug, toothbrush, hairbrush, condom, tampax, aspirin, paperback book, contact lens case, sweater, notebook, walkman, candy bar, batteries, tapes, last month's Utne Reader, Harper's, and Wired. You never know where you'll be spending the night, after all, or where the next temp assignment will take you. Don't leave anything behind -- you may never get back to pick it up.

We have our own lexicon, our own language, developed from the television that was our babysitter, the arcade games that were our bedtime stories. "Wizard needs food, badly..." We can all sing the Slinky advertising jingle, "Conjunction Junction," and the theme from The Dukes of Hazzard. "Someday, the mountain might get em, but the law never will..." We remember Alice Cooper on The Muppet Show. Many of us can find the *fnord.* We have a nasty, sneaking urge to end any session of counting by going "One, two, three four, five. Five wonderful pumpkins."

We remember the episode of Happy Days where the Fonz served jury duty and acquitted an innocent man. We watched The Avengers in re-runs, but only the episodes with Mrs. Peel. Ghostbusters was the funniest thing we'd ever seen, and Egon was our main man, and it's true, we never studied. We nursed on the cruel and marvelous madness of Roald Dahl. We rooted for Wile E. Coyote, Supergenius. We cheered for Boris Badenoff and Natasha Fatale. We adored Darkwing Duck, the Tiny Toons, and the Animaniacs, because their self-conscious, black humor was ours, infinitely ours. Of course Ren & Stimpy is gross. Life is gross. Of course Lisa Simpson is lost in a hellish world of grownups who never quite get it: she’s like us.

We get most of our current affairs information from Doonesbury -- with the demise of Bloom County, we no longer get a second opinion. We know that you keep evil in the microwave. We learned that, like so much else, from Terry Gilliam. "Mom! Dad! Don't touch it -- it's eeeevvviiiiilll!" But our parents never listened.

We, on the other hand, know all about clues, the missing and getting of them, and the clue police who can be counted on to clue you in if you miss the clue bus. "Clue phone! It's for you!"

We love you very much, and we cannot forgive you. Yours is the generation of "You’re only as old as you feel," and "Forty years young." You never grew up, and so we grew up for you. Why is age so horrible to you, Dad? Everybody gets old: years are earned. The way to be young all your life is to die at nineteen: because you’re over thirty, does that mean you can no longer trust yourself?

We have not abandoned our childhood, although it was short and complicated. Rather, we revel in its remnants. We get up early on Saturdays to watch Eek! the Cat and The Tick. We go out late at night to run around on the playscapes that you built for the kids who came after us, the kids you seemed to want so much more. We have a special place in our hearts for Matt Groenig, and we think that George Carlin was really funny once, and Paula Poundstone still is.

We wonder what happened to the generation between Bob Dole and Bill Clinton. Were they ground up and made into cookies? "Soylent Green -- is people!" We wonder if we, too, are destined to sink without a ripple, lost to history.

Our art is your garbage, and your trash is our triumph. We can admire the breadth of a Danny Elfman, but the depth of a Frank Sinatra is a little beyond us. We're a little defensive, yeah. So what?

Our high school experience was Better Off Dead, not Risky Business. Our college experience was Revenge of the Nerds, not Animal House. We have taste. We just don't always care to exercise it. We worship at the shrine of Tim Curry. We bow before our deity, Robin Williams. Bruce Campbell and Kathryn Bigelow are both OK with us, and Dennis Miller is our boy -- anybody who can get paid for throwing temper tantrums deserves adulation. We can run a Jungian deconstruction of Reservoir Dogs, and quote all the really kewl lines, too.

Our music is bitter, our movies are bloody, and our hearts are broken by the futility of it all. We're not going to save the world, and neither are our happier, more sheltered younger brothers and sisters. Lovely Mother Earth has another six or ten billion years to live. You are a grease spot. The planet doesn't need saving -- she'll be here long after we're gone, blue and holy and safe. The only thing we're destroying around here is ourselves, and our fellow life forms: the only company we’re sure we have in a vast and cold and fathomless universe to which we do not matter one whit.

We had books and stories: War Day. The Cold and the Dark. "The Manhattan Telephone Book (abridged)." "Damnation Alley." Nuclear War: What’s In It For You. You made us watch Threads and The Day After and read Hiroshima in school, and we have never forgiven you. We imagined dying like Marie Curie, fingers rotting as she recorded the progress of her disease. We imagined a much different "end of history."

Nuclear war was too big to worry about, so we accepted it. In the event of a nuclear holocaust, you had bomb shelters and "duck and cover." We had plans to drive to the Pratt & Whitney or Sikorsky plant and sit on the hoods of the cars with the radio turned up, drinking from a bottle of whisky and holding a sun reflector. Nero had a point: when the end is inevitable, do it in style... We had accepted our deaths. Now we are standing in the sunlight blinking, and wondering what to do with our suddenly long and frightening lives. Understand: we never expected to live this long.

Our music reflects a cheery and upbeat fatality: we have learned to revel in the futility of it all. "It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine: It’s time I had some time alone." And yet, there is a reluctant hope, a sneaking admiration: You pulled it off, Mom and Dad. Well, shucks, the bombs are gone... But Oingo Boingo put it best: "No one, no one, no one, no one, no one lives forever."

We are hip to the irony of Charlie the Tuna, attempting to make himself palatable enough to be slaughtered and devoured. As we see it, it’s not unlike the landscape of employment, the path our lives follow. We follow the generation that finally figured out how to take it with them: all one has to do is use it up. We’re tough, and we’re sharp, and we’re shell-shocked and scarred and scared. We know this in our bones: the system isn’t failing. The system has failed. Things will get better, sure: but they won’t be getting better for us. Our turn is not going to come. Our kid brothers and sisters, however, may have a shot.

We are not angry that the next generation was protected: we plan to keep on protecting them for as long as we can. We are angry that we were not protected as well. But hey, you said it, Dad: Life is not fair.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are live without a net.

"We made it through, not all but most." We throw Annual End of the World parties. Just in case. We get maudlin on New Year's Eve, and we don't litter. Much. We are familiar with the art of Ansel Adams, and we think that his portrait of Georgia O'Keefe makes her look like Geddy Lee.

We process fast, and adapt faster, and we don't communicate well with people inured to a slower pace. We've got handshake, but no carrier. There are newsgroups for people like us. We are the generation with e-mail addresses on our business cards. We are already nostalgic for today. We are the generation that cannot imagine life without access to the 'Net - much as you could not imagine life without access to a phone. We make kissy faces at the cameras in ATM's. We make sure to say "Hi!" to the friendly NSA agent when our phone line clicks a lot. We are the cyberpunks and the cypherpunks, and we know that privacy is a myth.

We'd be paranoid, except that it only bugs us a little that someone is staring over our shoulders. We just assume that there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. What's the big deal? "What are you, dumb?"

We have a reputation for not reading, not caring. Still, you find us at K-Mart's Borders Books and Music in droves. We're not just there for the cappuccino, or the chess. But it helps. We can tell a Monet from a Van Gogh.

We think that flesh-eating streptococcus is hysterically funny, and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy is almost better. We knew they hadn't cleaned up Chernobyl. We practice "safer sex," and we bitch about it, but we also know that AIDS is a bad way to die. We tied yellow ribbons around oak trees, and stayed up all night watching the LA riots on CNN. We listen to N.P.R. We remember the Challenger explosion in technicolor, but Oklahoma City is already fading. We were not shocked by domestic terrorism: if anything, what we felt was a certain sick, fascinated relief, and horrified awe at the scale of the carnage. "Well, at least it’s begun." Like soldiers in trenches, we prefer the stark raving terror of open war over the long grind of the wait.

We are not impressed. We are amused.

You scorn us for our fatalism, our violence, our lack of hope, our outre appearances. We are the skinheads, the multiply pierced, the gorgeously tattooed, the Goffs with the black hair dye and the women in the ugly shoes. We find government to be overwhelmingly arrogant. Philosophically, we are libertarians and anarchists. We are also practical enough to realize that society exists to protect its members, so we figure we won’t blow up Congress just yet.

We remember when snow was white when it fell... but sometimes, we see a red-tailed hawk inside city limits, and that’s another one we have to grant you. "There is no try! Only do!" We take on small causes: giving a homeless woman a pair of gloves, a dollar. So what if she's going to spend it on booze. That's what I was going to spend it on. Booze, or CD's. Or maybe rent.

We work forty-five hour weeks for eight dollars an hour with no vacation and no benefits... when we can find full time work. We have four years of college, but no degree, and we're going back to school to become clerical workers. We are the temps around your water cooler. We are the managers of your fast-food restaurants.

We know where our towels are. We expect to be hit by oncoming trains. We think the amount of effort you expend in trying to protect people from their own stupidity is ridiculous. We unleash our barbaric yawp upon the world. We are tribal, because no-one is going to take care of us except for us. We're all in this together. We'll be just fine.

We are fond of old men: we see our kinship to Walt Whitman, Samuel Clemens, Kurt Vonnegut. We are fond of old women: Gloria Steinem may be the last real feminist. Dorothy Parker could kick some ass. We happen to like Hillary Rodham Clinton, chocolate chip cookies or no chocolate chip cookies: and it hurts, Mom, because she reminds us of you. She’s trying so blasted hard, and it’s just not enough.

Yes, Mom, we know that you tried.

We know what be-ins were. Can you say the same of raves?

We've read a lot of Shakespeare, and we like the tragedies best. We desperately want to fall in love, and we’re dead sure that there is no happily ever after. We never say for ever, and we do not marry till death us do part. "What is the difference between love and herpes? Herpes is forever." Our favorite movie is Casablanca, and our favorite book is The Princess Bride.

Our personal heroes include Richard Feynman and Richard Pryor. We know that far more important than doing it well is being able to laugh at yourself doing it. We want a right livelihood, but we like eating, too. We're succumbing to serious stress-related illnesses at the age of twenty-three. Some of us graduate college with our virginity intact, and some of us don't make it into high school. We have very complicated sex lives.

We probably drink too much, unless we don't drink at all. We hate our jobs, and sometimes we hate you for having it so much easier. We're leaning on our shovels. We're moving to Boston. Or Seattle. We don't start things we don't think we can finish, but sometimes we don't finish them anyway. Little things. Like college.

We're bright, but we're not up-and-coming. We're savvy, but we're not on the move. We look both ways before crossing the street, but we try not to look like we're doing it. We're cool, because we know that if you show fear, you're a dead man. They can smell fear. "They? They who?" Well, honestly: you. The baby boomers. Baby boomers can smell fear.

You're right, we do not respect you. How can we, when you never respected yourselves?

You would like to dismiss us, but we are not going away. You call us the baby busters, but there are more of us than there were of you. You call us slackers. We say, "We are not worthy!" and smile. We tend to consider you irony-challenged. On the streets of a big city, we look for one another on the streets like Americans in Japan, and smile with the camaraderie of the oppressed.

We take ourselves way too seriously. This is a very funny joke.

We are pedestrians in a world without sidewalks, striding across traffic against the light. We are overqualified, overeducated, overworked, overstimulated, underpaid, underemployed, undervalued and underwhelmed. Our cats have their shots, but we don't have health insurance. We are smart, and we are lost, and we are going to proceed wearily through life with a thick, hopeless, mournful longing and a bleary-eyed fatalistic love that we won't bother to try to explain. We have a martyr complex, yes indeed.

We're not holding out any hope, but we never learned to back down.

In the final analysis, we are to you as you were to your parents, back when the world was new, God was in his heaven, and America was boss. We are your children, and we are not what you wanted us to be, and we scare you to death.

And no thank you, Mom, but we do not want to move back home.



My comments follow, for those who've already read it.


When I was a very small child, I was convinced that nuclear war would destroy the world before I could grow up.

I thought this because many adults around me had grown up with the same fear, indoctrinated and terrified as children. The difference was in our educations: my parents were taught that survival was a possibility (both through after the Bomb B-movies, and that whole "hide under your desk with these magic radiation-blocking textbooks held over your head and all will be well" thing, which we all found hilarious).

I knew what a nuclear winter would do to the planet by age 8, and knew that humanity's survival or even the rebuilding of civilization was wildly improbable. The threat was just something to be accepted, as far from the control of anyone I knew as a normal winter was. I was not afraid, because I didn't understand death; I remember hoping that I would be one of the ones to die in the initial blast, and not linger on as a mutated and icky whatever.

After the nukes, it was AIDS. Grown-ups read their mysterious newspapers, which as all of us knew contained nothing good besides the funnies, and collectively and globally panicked. Every day SIDA (hey, I grew up in France) was on the news. I knew what sex was and what it was for (see previous parentheses); now I thought that it would probably be what killed me, before anyone could consider me "old." A little girl in my elementary school died, supposedly of AIDS from a blood transfusion before anyone knew that was particularly dangerous.
Then it was the environment, as we learned in greater detail as the years went on what a hopeless situation we had been left with - more by our grandparents and great-grands and great-greats than our parents...
Again, however, these were not reasons to live in fear, besides the fact that we were too young to feel anything but immortal. They became reasons, especially as we grew into preteens and teenagers and twentysomethings, to make the most of every day.

A few things struck me in Bear's essay. One was the observation that boomers are terrified of ageing; though my parents are pretty good examples of ageing gracefully, I see this terror in their slightly younger contemporaries, those who came of age in the Sixties and Seventies. I somehow hadn't really noticed that, probably because my parents' attitude was a bit different.
One was the realization that I *know* privacy is a myth, and that it doesn't bug me that much.
One was that I and everyone I know my age assumes JFK, MLK, Malcolm X, etc etc were assassinated and that there was a cover-up. And that that is just the cost of doing business, government-wise; their screw-up was getting caught.

One was the line "we never expected to live this long."
I didn't realize it, but I didn't. And now that I'm making all these decisions about future career/education/lifestyle/children/marital status, I'm terrified because I feel like I've never really thought about it before. Unlike The Who, I didn't "hope I die before I get old" - I just assumed that, statistically, I probably would.
Now I have a lifetime ahead of me and NO DAMN CLUE as to what to do with it, or so it often seems.



Also, PS - As Mom knows, I am moving back home.