Generation X

By definition, I'm a baby boomer. The thing is, I wasn't part of the generation born right after the war. I didn't come of age during the 1960's, I was born in the 1960's. I didn't go to Woodstock. I wasn't even aware of the Vietnam War (thank goodness for that!). Not that I'm complaining about when I was born; I was born at a great time. But I've never felt like a baby boomer. I grew up on the Beatles, but I was really just listening to my older siblings' Beatles records. The Beatles broke up when I was seven.

Shows like 'Thirtysomething' were geared and marketed towards the baby boomers. But they didn't mean anything to me because at the time they aired, I was too young to be able to relate to them. Whenever there is talk in the media about the baby boomers, it's never geared towards people my age; it's always geared towards the front end of the baby boom: 'The Boomers Are Reaching Retirement Age,' for example.

It's been years since this subject really mattered that much to me, but I'm expressing my thoughts now because... I've got a blog!

It started with the book, 'Generation X', by Douglas Coupland. At last, something was geared towards us, the tail-end of the 'baby boom.' As he defined it, it wasn't necessarily the post-baby boom generation, but rather it was an overlap of the defined baby boom generation and the children born a little bit after: those born in the late 1950's and then through the 1960's - as I read it, the younger siblings of the baby boomers. At first, they were synonymous with twentysomethings, but as time went on, those twentysomethings began turning thirty. And then the term Generation X started being applied to the new twentysomethings. Was it Generation X or or Age Group X, after all?

The media couldn't even agree on what Generation X meant anymore. But most definitions had it as those born after the baby boom. And when I turned thirty, I was no longer a twentysomething, and therefore no longer a member of Generation X. So once again, I was a baby boomer to whom nothing was geared towards; I felt forgotten again. Like I mentioned previously, I'm happy that I was born when I was regarding the troubling social climate of the 1960's and not having the anguish and trauma of the draft hanging over me; I guess what I'm saying is I want my Generation X label back. Whether or not it's really a positive label is another matter, but at least it was mine (for awhile, at least).

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My review of the book 'Generation X' is, well, I couldn't tell you. I only made it about half-way through, although I remember reading all the margins.