Talkin 'Bout My Generation

A little more than a year and a half ago, I walked into my twentieth high school class reunion. (But before I go on...I have to first give a quick shout out to my fellow classmates of Lyman High School's Class of 1988..."Hey! Hey! How 'Bout Them Hounds!!!" (Insert gratuitous barking noises here)).

While some people look forward to going to their high school reunions others dread even the thought of attending them. I felt compelled to go though...not because I had to, but because I wanted to. I hadn't seen these people in ten years (since the last reunion) and I knew that once I did, I'd be back in my comfort zone. The class I graduated with was a fairly large but fairly close group. There was a camaraderie about our gang that always stood out in my mind. Sure, maybe it was the fact that we were all in the same graduating class and we came from the same high school, but I always thought it was something much more...it was something bigger than that.

As a group we were the perfect sampling of what would come to be known as an emerging demographic in our global society. For the most part, our commonality existed in the fact that we were born at the beginning of a new decade, the 1970's, yet right in the middle of our generation known today as Generation X. Many sources I've looked into seem to be in agreement that the term 'Generation X' came from Canadian author Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel, Generation X: Tales For An Accelerated Culture. However, there is some disagreement on the exact years Generation X encompasses. Most of these same sources indicate that Generation X includes the birth years from at least 1965 to 1980. (Though some do say that Generation X births started as far back as 1960 and ended with births as late as 1982.) In any case, we are known as the generation who followed the baby boomers. There are many books and web sites out there that are written about our generation and they all seem to have their own opinions about us. So I thought it might be nice to give you a brief synopsis of how we are perceived by the rest of the world.

WHO WE ARE

There are quite possibly more than 51 million of us "Gen-Xers" out there. We are considered to be the "13th generation" according to the 1991 book Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584-2069 by William Strauss and Neil Howe. This simply means that we are the 13th generation to be familiar with the flag of the United States (counting back to the peers of Benjamin Franklin). Paul Fussell used the "X" from Generation X in his book, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, to describe a group of people who want to pull away from class, status and money in society. (Sound familiar??) Okay...so we're rebels. In fact, in 1976 one of the biggest rebels of our generation used the phrase 'Generation X' as the name of his punk rock band until 1981. After that, Billy Idol branched out on his own for a more successful solo career. He quite possibly created the anthem for our generation with his hit song, Rebel Yell, in 1983.

We are the group who grew up in the age of television, Atari 2600s and computers. Then we came of age during the 'me generation' of the 1980s. Many of us became "latchkey" kids because of an increasing divorce rate and our working moms. But ultimately, this led to developing traits of independence, resilience and adaptability that stayed with us long beyond college and into our professional careers.

WHO WE ARE NOT

We tend to dislike authority and rigid work requirements. We don't like step-by-step instructions. We'd rather have feedback and suggestions. We have no expectations of job security. Instead, we tend to be more loyal to our careers than to our employers. We don't like to spend much time talking about things and having meetings. We want to jump in, get the work done and move on to other things. We also don't tend to waste time complaining about our jobs. Instead, we're quick to send our resumes out and accept the best offer we can find at another organization. Early on, we tended to not have much optimism for the future. Our attitudes toward religion tended to be different as well. Though many of us seemed to believe in God or at least "a higher power", others leaned toward being indifferent or hostile toward religion.

IT WAS A TIME WHEN...

We grew up during the end of the Cold War. We experienced the collapses of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union during the Reagan and "Bush-41" years. There was the recession of the early 80s followed by the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster of the mid 80s. We are the MTV Generation that experienced and defined new genres of music in our culture. The births of Heavy Metal, Punk Rock, Grunge, Hip Hop, Rap, New Wave and Synth Pop are just some of the genres that exploded onto the scene. We were still grounded in good old Rock 'N Roll and anchored by the artists of our time including: Bruce Springsteen, Genesis, Def Leppard, The Police, Bon Jovi, Michael Jackson, Madonna, R.E.M., Prince and so many many more. They must have done something right because most of their music is still popular today. Our peers were breaking onto the movie scene as well. We had the "Brat Pack" which was a play on the "Rat Pack" that was popular during the 1950s and 1960s. Our group included the likes of Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy. We discovered ourselves and we grew up during the 1980s.

And now, we're all embracing forty. Some of us have already gotten there. Still many of us will turn forty in the next several years. We've grown by leaps and bounds more than we had during the 1980s though. We've established ourselves in our careers. We've gotten married (although for many...more than once). We've started families. We've embraced the internet and we have pioneered new ways to communicate with each other. We've led the way in creating more of a global society than had ever existed before. That's not too bad for a bunch of misfit rebels who wanted nothing to do with anyone else...or so "they" thought. Maybe we're not so "X" after all. Maybe we're the ones who have stepped up and created amazing change in our world. Certainly, this is not the "Silent Generation" (born between 1925 and 1942 or during the Great Depression and beginning of World War II). Maybe we've always just been misunderstood.

But to that class of more than 400 kids that graduated with me back in 1988 at dear old Lyman High...I say hey, we didn't turn out so bad after all. Now let's all reach out and embrace forty together.

(By the way, if you'd like to relive a small part of the 80's in about three and a half minutes, check out the tongue in cheek music video for 1985 by Bowling for Soup.)