It’s that classic debate/season when we all ask: is Gen X better than Millennials because they grew up without GPS? Or are Millennials better than Gen X because they’ve completely eradicated masculine and feminine nouns in the four most spoken gendered languages?
My age is of course anywhere between 42 and 57, so I know exactly what those days were like. Oh, oh, oh, and Mom dropping us off at the mall? Brother, that’s really got me reminiscing. When boys were boys, and buttery soft LulaRoe leggings weren’t pants.
Anyway, there seems to be a lot of confusion about what, or what is not, Gen X. Here’s how you know.
- You were born between the years 1965 and 1980.
- You witnessed either/both: RFK’s assasination and the Challenger explosion.
- Chuck Taylors. Always. Even with a suit.
- You know how to use the TV remote and how to get the printer working….
- …But can’t figure out how to turn off these damn parental controls you’ve set on the iPad’s Disney+ bundle package.
- Your WiFi name is hilarious in any case, something like “My Wifi!” or “get your own damn internet” or “2A, I Know You Have My Packages.”
- You praise an older or younger coworker by calling them out as a “total rock star” in a department-wide email that was sent with the sole intent to chide 3 to 4 other coworkers for not being what you perceive to be “total rock stars” at their jobs.
- You call a regular “marker” a “Magic Marker” as if that’s a brand name that’s become so ubiquitous it stands in for a generic product, like Kleenex or Band-Aid, but “Magic Marker” was never a brand name, and nobody is quite sure where the “magic” element comes from but it’s too small of a tic for them to make a big deal about it.
- Sometimes you have a Band-Aid on your face from getting a small mole biopsied at the derm. It’s non-fatal, phew! Baby oil in the summers til we were browner than [offensive association].
- Your precocious kid is constantly saying and doing the most Tweetable, coherent stuff without any finessing or goading on your part.
- You call porn “porno.”
- Slacker life! You just got around to Googling “BBL” this week. Ew! You want your ass smaller, not bigger. A big butt would interfere with your rock hard bosom. That’s just perverse.
- You’ve got small small eyebrows.
That sums it up. Keep on keeping on. Fast cars rock. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a legend. Peace out. That is all.
