:yep: I'm Gen X - and I'm 40. I think it ends around 1978. Gen X folks - never had sex without the very real specter of AIDs. No free love for us - it always had the potential to end in death.


Now - I did have friends whose parents were able to get them summer gigs at Xerox and Kodak and PSC, etc. etc. back in the day. But as we were coming out of high school and then colllege (late 1980's and early 1990's) - those jobs simply died. Especially for those of us in the Great Lakes. They had to hustle to jump over to med tech and science tech lab jobs.

Here's another litmust test for Gen X. You actually had to take classes about this new thing called the internet at University (I did in 1993) but if you went to University - you've NEVER had a job without email. . . Maybe if you were born in 1965 you did - but by the time you were 28 you couldn't function at work without it.

I don't understand Y and Millenials. They are hopeful and upbeat. They remind me of my mom's generation (the Boomers).

So here I sit - a typical gen x cynical asshole. Funny - we might have been the generation that even asked the question (thinking back to two slices of time in America - Say Anything and Reality Bites) . . . What if NONE of those things happen? What if we don't have a house, 2.5 kids, a car, a steady job. Will our lives be failures?

It kind of makes me happy to see the Y's and Mills so full of hope. And expectation. And what some folks call 'entitlement' - I call expectation. They kind of remind me of my parents circa 1978.

You find gen y to be upbeat and hopeful. Many in my age bracket refuse to participate in the system because they don't feel like it will make a difference, and spend a ridiculous amount of time on things that will make them sick or kill them because there doesn't seem to be a way to do well. Hell, it's my gen who keeps murdering their children

They are aggressive very much activist oriented. And I love that they are 'awake' - like they get the idea of a walkable community.

Yet there are older gen x'ers and younger boomers still trying to shove down their throad the Ownership Society - a sedan - - an SUV - a couple of kids, and the rotary club.

They get that we have to invest in our country. Takes money to prosper. As a country.

And a few - two in particular - who've left Wall Street as fast as they got there - and one is now a high school Math teacher in Newark - and the other is a finance type for a local non-profit urban housing action committee.

I do not believe for one minute that the average 20 something in America is a selfish, entitled snot. No way.

Too many people do think we're selfish, entitled snots. I don't think we are any more than any other generation.

But I do think we tend to be dark and somewhat emo. We have a lot who self-medicate, and "what's the point?" Is the battle cry of many (not all) people in my age group. "Both sides are the same, so what's the point?"

It doesn't mean everyone is like that--I choose to hang around people who are activist-type and care to try to make change. But out of the roughly thousand that I knew growing up, very few have become those types of people.

The younger ones, who I'd call the millenials (anyone 23 and younger) seem to drive change, but I think we're going to have to wait and see how they all turn out since many are still in their teens.

Good post.

Watch "Say Anything" again . . . that Commencement Speech at the beginning of the movie? How very very true.

They weren't exactly assembly, but there was a line. One was at a bottling plant, and one was at several industrial bakeries.

There's never been a lot of manufacturing jobs in my state (MS), so I never had much opportunity to even apply for a job like that. There's a Nissan plant up near Jackson, but not much else. There was some textile manufacturing up in the northern part of the state, but it died about 20 years ago. I don't even know anyone with an assembly line job. I've only known a handful in my entire life.

- if you haven't done assembly line work. I worked assembly line in the mid 1970's. I took a lot away from that job and have applied assembly line methods to other things I've done in my life, both at work and as a volunteer. What I learned there has come in handy in doing food prep for large crowds, mass mailings, producing anything in large quantities. It wasn't a fun job. The pay sucked. But the experience was invaluable.

You're right that many assembly line jobs are now gone. A shame, too, as that's indicative that many manufacturing jobs no longer exist.