Growing Into Generation X

by Guest Blogger Loren Christie (b. 1976)

Blog: Dude, Where Am I?

Come as you are, as you were,
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend, as an old enemy.
Take your time, hurry up
The choice is yours, don't be late.
Take a rest, as a friend, as an old memoria

-from album Nevermind, Kurt Cobain

Image via Wikipedia

It was 1989 when I refused to participate in Generation X, because I believed this group was nothing like me. I was sitting in my orthodontist's office chewing on wax after getting braces tightened. I might have been one of the only 13 year olds to be annoyed by the title Generation X, and I remember tossing aside the tattered copy of Mademoiselle magazine that was attempting to label me.

Anti-Generation X
"I am anti-Generation X," I told my hot pink scrunchy-wearing-friends at the lunch table a year later in Junior High School. They seemed confused..

"Old people say that our generation is called X because we're like, totally selfish and amoral, roaming around like nomads with no goals and no character. None of that describes me, and I'm like, so offended." I said..

However, those at my lunch table that day at Beech Street Junior High School were not ruffled by the title. There were far more pressing societal issues to worry about, like making sure none of us was wearing the same dress, or color, to the end of the year dance. So the generation discussion was trumped by the dress discussion. I called "red" and then the four of us teenage girls continued eating our pizza bagels in relative silence while rushing through the social studies homework assignment that was due in ten minutes.

Loren's High School Editorial
In 1992, at 17 years old, my disdain for the term "Generation X" came out in editorials I wrote for my high school newspaper. Here is an excerpt:

"Maybe the problem with Generation X is the fault of the Baby Boomers who immersed their children in a society that has erased values. Things come too easily to us, so they mean less. We are an impatient group thanks to technological advances, like the invention of microwaves and beepers... My generation confuses me, and I cannot relate. Some would rather adopt a whale and clean a highway than adopt some morals and clean up their lives. How is it that we can respect the Earth, but not ourselves or each other?... Our pop culture role models stink. Take Madonna, the singer, for example. Lady, do you realize you are named Madonna? Are you proud that you have traded your integrity for fame?"

Nirvana and Growing On Me
I graduated high school in 1993, at the height of the grunge phase and discovered at my seasonal job at Sam Goody Records that I secretly loved blasting Nirvana's Nevermind CD in the empty store at closing as I vacuumed. Despite my grumbling, Generation X was growing on me. I traded my fitted shirts for flannels to my mother's dismay, and continued to perm my hair until it nearly fried off my scalp.

I still didn't agree with the whole idea of being grouped into that lazy, clueless generation. I considered myself to be a young woman with clues and plans. As I went through college and started my first job the events that marked my generation shaped me to an extent, whether I liked it or not.

Generation X: Generation Underestimated
As a thirty-something I find myself feeling nostalgic about objects, people and events that are associated with Generation X, and I feel a bit like I've betrayed my younger, defiant self. Generation X has grown on me and I'm discovering that the critics who named us underestimated us on so many levels. We are a hard working generation, facing the elimination of social security in our lifetime, struggling through economic challenges that our grandparents faced as children, volunteering to go to war like the Greatest Generation, trying more than any previous generation to protect the environment. Generation X is quite impressive today in its maturity.

I remember interviewing a WWII vet one year for a newspaper feature story on Memorial Day. The way he and his vet buddies reminisced about their generation was really moving. Even though these men did not grow up together, being a part of the Greatest Generation linked them in invisible ways. They had common memories, and yet they each maintained character and individuality.

"My Generation...dropping like flies..."
"My generation, we're dropping like flies every day. Soon there won't be many of us left," a vet told me. It was then that I began to understand what it means to embrace your generation, and accept the good and the bad labels that go with it.

Space Shuttle, Flashdance, ET, Parachute Pants

Today, I go on Facebook and step into the familiarity of my generation like a favorite pair of jeans, soft and worn in places only Generation Xer's know. I know that as this group ages I will look to it even more and watch it grow in wisdom. I don't have to agree with the way pop culture behaves, but I can admit to singing Material Girl at the top of my lungs with my friends on the school playground. Like everyone else I grew up with, I can solemnly tell you where I was when the Columbia Space Shuttle exploded. At 9 years old, I danced to the Flashdance soundtrack record sporting a headband on my neighbor's front lawn in 1983. I cried during the movies ET and Ghost. I did not wear parachute pants, or own "the Clapper" but I sure do remember them. These are some of the common memories that bond my generation. Therefore, I'm part of this group by social force and despite our projected sloth, it seems to me that Generation X is turning out alright after all.

Loren Elizabeth Christie is an accomplished creative writer who lives in New York with her husband and three children. She blogs on a variety of subjects. Her posts include ramblings of talking animals; personal memoirs about faith and childhood; comical and sentimental perspectives on marriage, and records of her adventures as a stay-at-home mom. Visit her blog at Dude, Where Am I?