Generation X
By: Alfia Lin Morello Gilligan
Tags: Coming Of Age, Aging, 80s, Generation X, Pop Culture

As my husband and I embark on our nightly — middle-aged suburbanites — after-dinner stroll around our neighborhood, we outline a purpose if you will, for the conversation to be had. The conversations cover a wide range from work, to our scheduled events, to admiring the siding on houses to use for our own future re-do, or most likely using not-so stealthy hand gestures, head motions, or eye rolls to indicate, appall. They’ve got to be joking.

On a recent journey of almost 1000 steps, the fodder at hand was flags, of the garden, front porch, or in some cases straight up flag pole in the middle of the front lawn variety. The flags are at times political (definite eye roll) or basic American (Ah, community.), some announce pride in heritage (Maybe we should visit those countries?) or zeal for sports — college or pro (Not my wheelhouse but, I listen intently to my husband sermonize). My favorite flags by far boast an infatuation with wine, forecast calls for weeding with a chance of drinking.

If I were to find myself salty enough to publicly declare a specific alliance to a leisure activity or otherwise, my flag of choice would proclaim I am proudly and definitively a member of Generation X. We are latchkey kids, we are music television’s bastard children, we are young, (Insert Pat Benatar lyrics.).

I am not blind to any generation including my own being wracked with strife and injustice, but as a child, preteen, and teen in the 80s, for the most part, we were afforded the freedom to focus on the big picture. Burgeoning POP culture.

I for one spent an entire weekend perfecting my Madonna look in order to properly experience LiveAid from the confines of a friend’s bedroom, ate dinner, bathed, and was ready for each new music video release (and loved when Michael Jackson created such epics that kept me up past bedtime), learned about the depth of importance of the Berlin Wall coming down while simultaneously watching it be destroyed, and I’ll round out this breathless rant with the myriad of coming-of-age-films that defined our very existence.

I’d be remiss if I failed to mention fashion. Now, was all the hairspray excessive? I suppose so. Attractive? Perhaps not. But the sculptures which became of some Aqua-Net and a round brush were the calling card of our day. Garish neons, bared or padded shoulders, parachute, or baggy bottoms. I did it all, and I’d do it again.

I’ll be the first to admit I have fallen grossly behind the times. I live an analog life in digital times. I do not bother to even pretend that I am with-it, hep, (or whatever the kids are calling it these days) or even the least bit knowledgeable on the current popular culture, yet I still feel strongly that the generation which pioneered CD’s and required neighborhood kids to stay outside in the street with their friends until the street lights came on or they were called in for dinner is the undisputed champion of generations.

If you were born in the 80s, let me stop you right now. You are NOT, contrary to what you may believe, an 80s baby. Please do not claim Gen X as your own. Millennials have plenty of generational contributions to be proud of — although I can’t fathom what they might be. You were simply born in the 80s. Period. And I beg of you, don’t — what you may think is — ironically don a neon crop-top and fingerless fishnet gloves to a Halloween party where you will no doubt prance far too jocularly to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” unless you painstakingly retrieved them from a box deeply nestled in your attic marked — at the very least — NINTH GRADE.