In recent weeks, I've starting seeing articles about "What happened to the Generation X slackers?" Most of these articles surmised that they "grew up to be responsible, hard working adults." Whatever!
First off, I'm probably the only person who wasn't offended by either the term "Generation X" or "slacker." As a matter of fact, I liked because being a "slacker" kind of sounded like being a "hippie." We dressed kind of like hippies and had our own music and culture like the hippies. I, myself, had a soul patch, wore Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers and Bart Simpson T-shirt, usually carried a copy of both
Rolling Stone and
Spin with me, and listened to Nirvana, Blind Mellon and REM on my Walkman. I even read
Generation X: Tales of an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland, because I considered it a kind of Bible of the subculture I in which belonged.
Also, like the hippies, we were hated by a certain segment of the older generation. We were hated by Baby Boomers. According to them, we were lazy, stupid, arrogant and had no taste in music. Whatever!
I first realized how bad this bigotry and hatred was at the first job I had out of college. I worked at one of the local newspapers. Among the career goals I had considered was to have my own syndicated newspaper column, sort of like Dave Barry, Joe Queenan, Art Buchwald and Ron Davis'
Chatter in the
News Leader. I had researched how to land a syndicated newspaper column and I knew I had to have tare sheets or clippings of an actual column to submit to a syndicate. My supervisor and managing editor was a Baby Boomer. When I told him that I wanted to write a column from a liberal Generation X perspective, he flew into a rage and snarled, "Absolutely not! Nobody cares what people of your generation's opinions." Whatever! (I guess he would rather read Bill O'Rielly, or a column by his wife or a real estate guy, who thinks it is cool to use the word "cattywompus" in his radio commercials).
Another Baby Boomer that I've had the displeasure of working with, enjoyed making jokes on the radio about Generation Xer's "who get them thar big college degrees and wind up asking ya if ya want fries with yer burger." I should note that this guy DOESN'T HAVE A COLLEGE DEGREE (but I've noticed several people people on Facebook, who are not college graduates, make this same stupid joke). He also didn't like that I had worked at the college radio station playing rock music. He didn't think that should be allowed on a radio station that received money from taxpayers. Whatever! (I didn't have the money to bribe a radio station to give me a radio show).
Most of these articles about "what happen to Generation X slackers" point out what we Generation X members already knew, we really weren't lazy or stupid. We quietly went to work, many times multi-tasking, doing things that we wanted to do and doing them our way. Granted, that has been hard for me to a degree, but I guess you could say this blog and my previous one is an example of me making the best of a bad situation and getting personal satisfaction from it, even if there isn't any pay. It is more for us personal rewards and goals than a huge house, fancy cars, stocks and bonds.
I discovered this video on
You Tube about Millennials. Yes, every thing the actors playing Millennials in this video say Baby Boomers accuse them of are the same things they accused us Generation Xer's of. The only difference is you could substitute
Brady Bunch for
Full House and it is exactly the same thing I was hear nearly twenty years ago.
I should point out that the Baby Boomers who gave me grief about being a Generation X slacker were Republicans. They were not the cool Baby Boomers who would have cool stories about hitchhiking to a Grateful Dead concert in Laurel Canyon and seeing Tom Smothers and Peter Fonda in the crowd. These were the Baby Boomers have been wearing a suit and tie since they were 10 years old. They seem to be upset that I wasn't more concerned about "welfare queens" or "the drug epidemic." Whatever!
Those two Baby Boomers I mentioned above have probably come around to the fact that they like some Generation Xers. I know for a fact these two still hate my guts (And yes, they know each other because second one brags that his sister dated the first guy), so I know I'm not their ideal Gen Xer. Their ideal Generation Xer is this guy:
And this guy:
Whatever!
I'm know I'm way cooler than those two Preppies. You see, even though I have had to shave off the soul patch and wear dress clothes to work, I'm still the slacker in the Bart Simpson t-shirt, who reads
Rolling Stone, watches MST3K and
Beavis and Butthead, and can't decide whether his personal theme song should be "No Rain" or "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
Opinions, like these, are why I'm considered the Super-Villain of the Ozarks!!!! Mwu-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
