Gen X

We were born into the Cold War, grew up in the era of Moscow on the Hudson, Yakov Smirnoff, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. We wore leg warmers and knew Jane Fonda from her workout videos and On Golden Pond. We saw E.T. phone home and pitied the fool with Mr. T.

It was the time of Solid Gold dancers, Schoolhouse Rock, and it’s ten o’clock, do you know where your children are?

We watched Dallas, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, The Facts of Life, and vintage reruns on TBS. We all said, “Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?”

Prime time television ruled; families watched together; beer and cigarettes were the dominant commercials (prescription drug ads didn’t exist yet). One parent could earn enough money to support a family of four comfortably, with vacations, dental insurance, and company property at the lake without ever tapping into the generous pension.

We read books wildly inappropriate for our years—VC Andrews and such. We saw the Berlin Wall come down after Ronnie failed to recall, after he created the homeless problem in the United States, after the Savings and Loans scandal, after the stock market crashed, after he decided that Americans don’t need to learn how our government works as part of our education, and after he got rid of something known as the Fairness Doctrine, paving the way for Fox News and worse. Most of us couldn’t vote when all of this happened; our parents did this. When you ask yourself how we got here, look at the 1980s—the answers are there.

The threat of annihilation is intrinsic to us. We have witnessed the changes in the world, but as a generation, we never gained the numbers to have a voice in what happens to us. Our Boomer predecessors failed to relinquish the reins, as generations before them had; instead, clinging so tightly they lost control. 1987 comes to mind. Then the Millennials came up behind us, and when Gen Z joined them, they pushed us out of the way, renamed the children’s table our parents kept us at past a reasonable age, denying us admission to the adult table. We’re still not allowed a seat there; our table is now labeled old and irrelevant.

All of you should have trusted us. We were the change the world needed. We attended integrated schools and rejected our parents’ and grandparents’ racism. We wanted to let people be themselves. Meanwhile, all of this technology is possible because of our generation. We learned early that if the world you live in is unsatisfactory, you can always hop on your bike, meet your friends in the woods, and build a fire near the fort you’ve been improving since you built it two summers ago, all while your parents thought you were at a friend’s house. We all flew under the radar as long as we remembered to phone home.

By the way, the calls are coming from inside the house. We know how this movie ends, so if you need us, we’ll either be in the hallway with our science books on our heads or out in the woods, building forts and fires with the scraps the rest of you have left for us. After all, the arcades and skating rinks are closed.