X2Y

Dear Generation Y,

I'm about two weeks from turning 39, which means, gulp, I'm about a year and two weeks from turning 40.

I can honestly say, when I was 19, I never thought this would happen to me, but here I am, about to be officially middle-aged, and yet I don't feel old, I don't feel anything like what I imagined an almost 40 year-old would feel.  Sure I'm not going to rock concerts anymore, and I don't just go out and drive around for the fun of it (gas is $3.71 for crying out loud).  But the other day I was driving somewhere listening to Led Zeppelin and I turned it up uncomfortably loud, and I remembered being 17.

I have read a few articles lately about how maligned, and conversely how under-estimated, the current generation of "young folks" seems to be.  Millennials, sometimes called Generation Y, are thought to be narcissistic, entitled, directionless and worst of all, obsessed with their darn iphones.  They also might just be the hope for a brighter tomorrow, somehow or other.  I notice, with some chagrin that the writers of both dire criticism as well as the wearers of rose colored glasses are generally representatives of my old nemesis: the Boomers.  Look kids, I graduated from high school in 1992, which puts me smack dab in the middle of what was labeled Generation X, which unfortunately, is the reference point from which you were perhaps mislabeled Generation Y.  But Gen X was a somewhat derogatory term from the very beginning, it meant we had no identity and no direction.  We were perceived as narcissistic, entitled and directionless.  iphones weren't a thing then, but if they were you can bet we would have been addicted to them as much as you (most of us are now glued to them as well).

My point, and a not so subtle one at that, is that the aging boomer generation, using their quaint old fashioned media outlets like Time Magazine and Newsweek (which have been pushed to the brink of extinction thanks to the interweb), to criticize and label my generation with tags like "slackers."  Which was largely a result of the fact that many of us, despite increasingly expensive college educations, were entering the workforce and finding that there was no room at the big kids table.  This happened for a lot of reasons: because our parents generation (the boomers) was freakishly large to begin with, because during their tenure women had re-entered the workforce in a major way, because they all stopped smoking and started doing yoga and thus were not checking out in their mid 40's due to massive coronaries.

By this point, most of us have managed to claw our way out of our parent's basement and into the workforce, but it wasn't easy, and for most of us it involved working at jobs that were, quite frankly, not in our social contract.  No one tells you that when you graduate with most bachelor's degrees, you are qualified for absolutely nothing.  Sure, in the long run, that piece of paper is going to open some doors for you, but in the meantime you have no marketable skills and (probably) heaps of student debt, congratulations kiddo, welcome to McDonalds. At this point in your life, you see those commercials for ITT tech and think, "why didn't I just do that?  They teach you how to fix stuff, and stuff always needs fixing."

My generation went through a major case of blaming the boomers, and they kind of deserve it, they are narcissistic, entitled and they're taking up too much space, but now you probably think we're on they're side.  But we totally are not!  Despite the fact that we might gripe about how you younglings are just re-doing all of our movies and music (seriously, everything these days is just a remake of 80's and 90's stuff, it's really bizarre), we really like you little hipsters, you're like our nerdy little brothers, and we just love your gadgets and how you think that you "discovered" Mother Lovebone, and the fact that Nirvana had this album called Bleach, really you're just adorable with that stuff.

What I want to tell you, although you probably don't care, is that you're going to grow up.  Whether you want to or not, you're going to grow up.  You're going to be 40 before you know it, you're going to get married, have kids and probably get a divorce or three, life isn't going to be easy and you're probably not going to "make it" the way you thought you would, but you will "make it" in the only way that really matters, you'll be around and you'll have a life that somehow goes around that iphone you're always staring at (I'm always staring at mine too, I'm not judging).

In the meantime, don't listen too much to the boomers, they're responsible for how messed up everything is, and they were the ones who thought they were going to "fix" the world.  But cut them some slack, they're my parents, and your grandparents, and they gave us some really great music, so for the sake of Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, lets just hope they don't completely eat our inheritance and destroy our environment before they shuffle off the mortal coil.

Good luck and God Bless,

Generation X