Let me make a case for staying old-fashioned about some things in our daily lives. Not everything has to be about being digital, wireless, and streaming. I learned how to listen to music on vinyl records, I read paper books, and I wrote papers with a typewriter.
That’s one of the great things about being Generation X: We’re not like a regular generation; we’re a cool generation.
We’re the Breakfast Club generation. We were too young for disco, too hip for folk music, and too cool for country-pop. We were there for punk rock, New Wave, hair metal, and ska, and we still have regrets about that last one.
We’re also the forgotten generation, overlooked by the ones that surround us. While the Millennials and Boomers snipe at each other, we’re watching like that Michael Jackson Eating Popcorn meme.
While the older Millennials and Gen Z whine that the other generation is out of touch and uneducated, we’re grabbing another beer and sitting in a couple lawn chairs to enjoy the show.
We were there for hip-hop’s Golden Age, we invented alternative everything, and we were there when MTV was truly all about the music.
I’ve been thinking about what it means to be in Generation X these days. The oldest members of our generation are just hitting 60, while the youngest members are turning 45. We’re not ready to retire, but it’s not too far from our thoughts, either.
We’re still masters of snark and sarcasm — snarcasm? — and we still blast Nirvana, Prince, and the Beastie Boys in our cars, embarrassing the crap out of our kids.
Gen X is the last generation to understand the analog life of the Boomers, who were flummoxed by a VCR clock. And we were the first to embrace the digital life of smartphones and mobile apps.
People say Millennials are digital natives because they were born with a smartphone in their hands, but we pulled the digital sword from the stone first.
As more and more analog functions are replaced by digital ones, how many skills will be lost as the Boomers and Gen X die out? Who’s going to know how to operate those old VCRs and Walkmans when Russia blows up the Internet? The younger generations will look at a record or cassette and ask, "What am I supposed to do with this? It doesn’t plug into my phone."
One of our important skills was making mix tapes for a guy or girl you really liked, carefully curating each song, recording it off a vinyl record or CD, making sure that each song was part of a larger story arc. You decorated the J-card as you worked, borrowing your sister’s markers, to show your almost-beloved how important it is.
Gen Z clicks together playlists with songs like "Oooh, Baby" and "Oooh Baby, Baby" and texts it to their partner, who texts back a thumbs-up emoji with an eggplant or peach emoji.
We remember programming our VCRs to catch the season ender of our favorite show, knowing that if we screwed up, we wouldn’t see it until summer reruns. And we remember the agony when the recording failed because our moms wanted to watch "Tootsie" for the 53rd time.
Gen Z streams their favorite show on their phone at top volume, without earbuds, in a crowded coffee shop.
I’m not ready to let go of those skills that I’ve honed over years and decades of practice. I spent decades learning how to make things work, not simulate them with digital replicas. I’m not going to dive into the digital pool just yet.
I will continue to pray at the altar of analog.
I still use a typewriter to type letters to people instead of texts or emails. I roll a piece of paper into the machine and pound the keys at 30 words-per-minute instead of my usual 95. I sign it with a fountain pen — because I still use fountain pens — stick it in an envelope, slap on a stamp, and drop it in the mail.
I carry a pocket watch that belonged to my grandfather. I had it repaired recently because I cracked the crystal 25 years ago. I wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea until someone said, "That’s a badass watch," and now I carry it everywhere.
Generation X is well on its way to becoming the old heads of the world, the ones who get ignored in the way we did to the generations before us. But until then, we have a lot of living to do and a lot of knowledge to share. Things that younger generations can use to carry them into a prosperous future of peace and plenty.
But no one is going to know what it is, because we put it on a cassette tape.
Photo credit: antony_mayfield (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons 2.0)
My new humor novel, Mackinac Island Nation, is finished and available from 4 Horsemen Publications. You can get the ebook and print versions here.