Gen X doesn’t care

This piece on Generation X by Courtney Dabney got a lot of attention early in the pandemic, and with the anniversary of the pandemic now upon us, it’s been popping up again in social media.

It’s an amusing, insightful, and slightly hyperbolic piece that I adored. She argues that Generation X, often forgotten for a variety of reasons, was uniquely qualified to manage this pandemic.

I especially loved this sentence:

“Generation X is generally accepted to have been born in that sliver of time between 1965 and 1980. What my teens didn’t know was that my entire generation has been dismissed from day one, and what’s more, we don’t really care.”

It’s a generalization, of course, but in my experience as a member of Generation X, it’s also quite true.

Friends in my generation are some of the least defensive people I know. Liberal or conservative, white collar or blue collar, Patriots fans or Cowboys fans, they really don’t care much for the opinions of others.

Lob an insult at us? Cast aspersions in our general direction? Impugn our integrity?

We tend to shrug our shoulders and move on. Sometimes I think the members of my generation are in a permanent state of shoulder shrug.

Admittedly, this may just the type of people with whom I befriend. Perhaps my admittedly small sample size has skewed my viewpoint over the overall generation, but I don’t think so.

For example:

Generation X has been long referred to as “the slacker generation,” but as far as I can tell, we’ve never really cared. Never complained about it for a second.

In fact, we kind of like it.

Is it true? I don’t really think so, but so what? You want to call us the slacker generation? Fine. We’re the slacker generation. Your opinion of our generation has no bearing on our reality.

By contrast, I’ve listened to many a boomer and millennial defend their generation against criticism with great passion. Suggest that millennials are spoiled, entitled, and hopelessly glued to their smartphones (not implying I agree with any of these generalizations) and you’re likely to get a lot of pushback from any millennial within earshot.

Tell a boomer that they’ve treated our nation like a trust fund, inheriting a country they didn’t build, failed to appreciate, yet seized on all the benefits left by the Greatest Generation while leaving nothing behind (not implying I agree with these generalizations, either), and you’ll likely receive an angry earful.

Call my generation a bunch of slackers?

Okay, boomer.

Generation X is also referred to as “the latchkey generation” as a result of increasing divorce rates, increased maternal participation in the workforce, and an absence of widespread childcare options outside the home when we were kids. For the first time in America, enormous numbers of children were left home without parental supervision for vast periods of time, and we really didn’t care. We ate our Pop Tarts, played our Atari 2600, and watched MTV.

No big deal.

We’re often described as cynical and disaffected. We’re the first generation to play video games. The first generation to enjoy video on demand. We embraced movies like Slackers, Clerks, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. We watched characters onscreen attempt to do nothing for long periods of time, and we thought it was very cool.

We’re the first generation to use the word “Whatever” as a comeback.

“So you think we’re a bunch of lazy slackers who don’t care about anything, including ourselves?”

“Whatever.”

We’re also the last generation for whom bullying was considered a normal and expected part of the school day. “Stick and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me” was a constant refrain from teachers and parents in our day. Telling a teacher about your classmate’s criminal behavior would often label you a tattle-tail, not only by your peers but possibly by teachers, too.

I knew a teacher who would affix the tail from a old Cowardly Lion costume onto students who tattled on their friends.

We all thought it was hilarious. That teacher would probably be behind bars today.

But was Courtney Dabney right that Generation X was better prepared to handle the pandemic?

I’m not so sure. I suspect that some people were more equipped to handle the challenges of the pandemic than others, but I think it was the result of a variety of factors that had nothing to do with your membership in a particular generation.

A friend recently said about me: “I suspect your long history of dealing with your own PTSD has given you a strong set of tools to be productive in the midst of the mess we’re in.”

My therapist agrees, telling me that I was uniquely qualified to manage this pandemic: “Thanks to your PTSD, you’ve spent your life preparing for some unseen force to reappear and kill you. Now it’s happened. We’re all shocked, but you’ve been expecting this for 30 years.”

Both are probably right, at least to a degree. But I also suspect that others who suffer from PTSD had a much harder time dealing with the pressures of the pandemic. Human beings are endlessly complex creatures, so it’s difficult and probably unwise to assume anything about anyone.

So I’m not sure if Generation X had it any easier as Dabney suggests.

The struggle for many in my generation was that they often found themselves trapped between two generations, trying to keep their children safe from a deadly virus while also trying to keep aging parents safe, too. The combination of assisting with remote schooling while trying to make your parents understand that three trips to the grocery store every week in the midst of a pandemic was not smart made it an especially challenging time for many of my Generation X friends.

But it’s been challenging for all of us to some degree, regardless of when you were born and what generation you occupy, and for many reasons. An infinite number of knowable and unknowable reasons.

It’s probably one of the reasons I enjoyed Dabney’s piece so much, and it’s probably why it garnered so much attention early in the pandemic.

In a time of suffering, a smile and perhaps a little laughter can go a long way. Nostalgia is endlessly enticing, too. Written in a time when we were washing our groceries and watching refrigerated trucks on New York City streets operate as mobile morgues, a little generational amusement was an appreciated diversion from the horrors of the time.

Maybe that’s why the piece has reappeared in the zeitgeist this past month.

We’re not out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot, despite the blind stupidity of some people.

Smiles and laughter are still in high demand.