Gen X: In the Middle of Everything
Growing up in the ‘70s
In the ‘70s, my mother would call us kids in from playing outside on a hot summer night because it was starting to get dark. She wasn’t exactly sure where we were as her voice rang out through the neighborhood.
When we heard her, we would reluctantly stop what we were doing and start heading home. Once there, we would negotiate staying out just a little longer.
“What if we just play in the street under the streetlight in front of the house,” we would always plead.
“Okay, but just a little longer,” she often relented.
She would go back in the house; the old rusty wooden framed screen door would slam close behind her. We would play in the street after dark and unsupervised, a seemingly impossible option in today’s world.
We hardly wore shoes and rarely wore shirts. Our feet were calloused and dirty from trekking all day on gravel roads, black top parking lots and sharp, dry brown grass.
It was summertime in the 70s and Gen Xers were in our element.
It was a wonderful time to be alive. The war in Vietnam was over and free love and protests were moving over for disco and Star Wars. We lived in a world not dominated by technology, but we embraced it as it unfolded with pixelated video games and microwaves in every home.
We were the offspring of the people who started the civil rights movement and although there was a lot of work to come, we were open minded.
And, we were tough.
If you were poor, like my family, you didn’t have air conditioning and cable was something new that other people could afford. In the evening and on Saturday mornings, we watched one of the three networks and occasionally the public TV channel.
The only television in the house was a smaller, older model in the living room with rabbit ears that had to be adjusted every time you changed the channel with a dial that clicked loudly as it rotated.
Sleeping during summer nights was brutal. In the hottest part of the summer, night offered little refuge from the omnipresent and stifling heat. All windows in the house were open and flying insects found their way in through the various holes in the old screens.
Lying in bed on top of the covers because it was too hot to sleep even under a sheet, you could clearly hear all the night sounds: the cicadas buzzing, car doors slamming and trains going by on some distant tracks. You planned the next day in your head.
The next day would consist of some type of gathering of neighborhood kids playing a variety of self-invented games that might have resembled basketball, baseball or football but we adjusted the rules to fit our needs, the number of kids, the yard we were playing in or the equipment we had.
If the game was lopsided, we stopped in the middle and traded players to make things even. If we were playing in the street and a car drove by, it was an automatic do-over. No parents told us what to play, whom to play with or by what rules.
We learned to get along and we learned to be adaptable. We learned to lead, and we learned to follow. We learned a sense of a fair play and how to settle arguments.
Gen Xers would use these skills when it was our turn to be part of the larger world and join the working community.
We watched the world transform. Caught right in between the conservative simpler times of the 50s and the soon-to-be technology revolution of the 90s.
As we secured our place as adults, we could relate to the experiences of the generations before us, the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers that followed them. But we also developed and used the technology that the Millennials and future generations would soon rely on. Because of our unique place in history, we could exist easily in both worlds.
Like a middle child bridging the gap between a younger and older sibling, Gen Xers mediate between old and new generations.
No, we didn’t grow up wearing seat belts and helmets, but we adjusted and started wearing them as adults. And we taught our children to do so.
Yes, we lived quite happily without the internet or cell phones, but we were the first generation to really use computers in our daily lives.
In math, we were taught that “x” was often used as a variable and I think that describes Gen Xers fairly well, always changing and adapting.
Earlier generations including Gen Xers should be careful when poking fun at a Millennial for not knowing how to write cursive, for living their life immersed on a phone or for not being able to drive a stick shift. This is the world that we have built, and we are the ones to bear the responsibility for that. Technology changes and holding a younger generation accountable for not knowing bygone ways is unfair. I think most of us could not tan a hide or churn butter.
But I have faith that if we had to figure out how, Gen Xers are up to the challenge. There never has been a Gen X president of the United States and congress is still filled with Baby Boomers. Millennials are just now starting to emerge as politicians, and it is a breath of fresh air to see younger people involved. Although I have great respect for the experiences of the Baby Boomers and welcome the fresh approach of the Millennials, in a world in need of a little ingenuity and compromise, my money is still on us Gen Xers!
For other nostalgic posts by Curt: