Ticking Talk

I’m old.
No really. Look at this pic:


It’s Grumpy Oldman! He ain’t hip! Has he broken his hip? How old is he? Well this guy remembers when Billy Idol and Gen X was the next Justin Bieber.

“You should be dead!”
Tell me about it!
Mr. Idol thinks so too. It’s cool. It’ll happen as soon as the baby boomers stop holding up the line for the rest of us. I promise I’ll take my turn. For now, the children of the revolution are revolting against moving on. They’re kicking and screaming against barricades of burt offerings and coffin lids.


“Hell no, we won’t go!”

Sounds reasonable to me, but what about my generation, Gen X?  What are we supposed to do in the meantime? Follow our dream? What dream is that? We were born the children of the children of the revolution—which is almost as intimidating as it sounds. Our parents had already won the war and were adorning us with its spoils. By the time it came for us to dream our revolution, we’d already been given everything we wanted.

And the revolution knows no grandchildren.

“Slackers!” That’s what the bitter and barren among the elder babies boomed at we the children of the X. The ones they didn’t understand. Sure, we marched with a Rebel Yell, but where were we going? Their institutional learning facilities never left us any road maps to the boom-world. All we could do was march circles; one foot stapled to the floor, confused by the enemy within ourselves.

Most boom Moms and Dads focused laser-like on teaching their spawn to lead, forgetting that a world full of leaders leaves no one left to follow. Gone were the days of second place silver and “I do what my dad did, because his dad did it before him and I’m proud.” 

“Think for yourselves!” They admonished. “You are a leader!” That’s great, but even a dream must be followed.

We were empty vessels in need of filling. So we tapped into the kegs Hollywood laid before us. Some became McFlys and Ghostbusters, while others took to a deeper  draught.

“Greed is good.”  Three cheers for Gordon Gekko

Oops. Wrong one.

Gordon Gekko, our cellulose nitrate spirit animal lit by the boom elder’s tribal fires to give us hope. A call to arms! Gen X marks the spot where we will infect Ys to come. Our future, our legacy, forever and ever, Amen.

Luckily, that wasn’t the sum of our parts. Others of us marked time as those before us did: trial and error.
And error.
And error.
The cuckoo warble, each error on the hour.

But that’s how each generation learns: the failures of others, the failures in ourselves. We nurse them like wounds and nurture them like mothers until we’re older, stronger, wiser and ready to grow up, and by that time it’s already time to turn over the keys. This is how we count the beat of time, unable to see the horology for the clocks. Our greatest hope is to make each movement relevant and leave the world more synchronous than the one we found. All the while, fighting the clock.