A Shoutout to My X
After school in the 1970s, I’d often stop by my friend RD’s house where we’d sit on stools at a counter and eat cereal while watching shows like MASH, All in the Family, and The Six Million Dollar Man on a rabbit-earred TV. RD’s mom allowed sugary cereals in the house while my protein-obsessed Jewish mother made me put a couple scoops of Wheat Germ on my Shredded Wheat, so I consumed as many bowls as I could. It never occurred to either of us, even during commercial breaks, that we may have been budding members of America’s greatest generation. And even looking back now, I’m still not sure we were. If anything, I think of us as the crossover generation: the people who grew up without the internet but who were young enough to become fluent users and creators. When you go online today, is it any wonder there’s some nostalgia for the before times? Amanda Fortini in the NYT: Is Gen X Actually the Greatest Generation? “How did a generation that gets stereotyped as slackers turn out to be a far more important group of artists than they were initially given credit for? Why does their work — their music, books, films, television shows, even their magazines — continue to resonate? As I looked at their cultural contributions and spoke to the artists, actors and writers who shaped the Gen X canon (at least those who would speak with me, since Gen X is nothing if not conflicted about the spotlight), I began to think that their upbringing, no matter how arduous it was to live through at the time, might also have provided the ideal conditions for making art.” (It would take some overly positive, Six Million Dollar Man-level historical revisionism to boost GenX to GreatestGen—we can rebuild it … better than it was before. But our generation definitely kicked some cultural ass.) To close the loop, it’s probably worth noting that, as he often does, RD proofread this blurb before I sent it out—and these days, his breakfast of choice usually includes multiple heaps of pure psyllium husk stirred into a glass of water. Meanwhile, I have extremely high glucose numbers, my doctor doesn’t really let me eat any kind of cereal, and protein-fortified products are lining grocery store shelves across America. My mom was right. That’s just one of the reasons I still think she was part of the actual greatest generation.
