If I had a d*ck it would be hard right now!

Never Trust Anyone Over 45

There is an anti-drug commercial from the 80’s that many people my age know and love. We don’t remember it merely because it was played at least twice a day in the prime after school television watching hours, but also because it was just so melodramatic. In the commercial a kid is sitting on his bed listening to music really loudly on his headphones and his father busts into the room and confronts him with a box of drug paraphernalia (not just a pipe and some weed, but what looks like an eight ball of heroin and some needles, which illustrates that this kid is from the suburbs and has ample allowance to buy such things). The boy recoils in fear knowing that he has to face his dad without the chemical assistance that he’s probably been relying on for the last year or so, and his father asks him, “Who taught you how to do this stuff?” And the boy yells back “You! Alright? I learned it by watching you”. And for the first time it dawns on the viewer that maybe the dad’s eyes weren’t wild and bugged out because he was incensed that his baby boy was experimenting with drugs, but because there was good dope in the house and junior was holding out on him. And the voiceover says, “Parents who use drugs have children who use drugs”. I think I have always loved that spot not just because of the absurdity of the notion that if the father was using drugs in front of his kid that he felt comfortable bursting in with authoritarian guns blazing. But because I loved the actors’ delivery of their lines. It’s not Oscar-worthy work but it was compelling. The whininess of the boy’s voice, the maniacal stare of the father with the simmering to a boil tone of voice while he demands answers from his kid. But mostly I love it because it set the precedent for all Baby Boomer/Generation-X interactions over the last 25 years. The Boomers ask their children why they can’t hold down a job, or finish college in less than four years, get or stayed married, raise children that aren’t Ritalin and Prozac zombies, and manage debt, and we their children answer back, ‘You! We learned it by watching you”. Now I feel obligated to preface this by saying that I think generations are the constructs of advertisers and lazy media. I find them reductive, and on the whole insulting generalizations. I only use the designates of Generation-X and Baby Boomers because I am myself lazy and need the short-hand. We all do it. Imagine you’re talking about a group of people and your conversation partner is unclear which person “Jerry” is. And “Jerry” is coincidently the only black person. And you make the instantaneous decision to risk looking like an ass by saying, “The black guy”. Instead of “You know, Jerry. The guy who is average height and weight with brown hair and brown eyes who wears t-shirts a lot. He sometimes eats peaches and roots for the Red Sox” The latter description says a great deal more about who Jerry is but you say “The black guy” because that gets the job done. Whomever you were speaking to now knows who “Jerry” is. I’m doing the same thing here when I use generations. I know we’re all God’s special little snow flakes, no two exactly alike. But some of us first fell when you could still tilt your head back, open your mouth and catch snowflakes on your tongue, without being afraid you’ve now been exposed to hazardous chemicals that will cause you to have flipper babies. And some of us are those peoples' neurotic I-Pod toting flipper babies. So please forgive me my use of labels. Especially when they cover such an expansive group, Generation-X is commonly defined as people born between 1964 and 1980. That means I definitely fit in the group but the only thing I have in common with someone who is forty-four years old to my thirty-one is that we both really hate people who are sixteen. The things that were supposed to define the generation when the term was first coined, were apathy, cynicism, and slackers. Civilization was expected to collapse under the weight of our flannel shirts and Nihilism. We were over-educated and under-employed in a rapidly changing economy in which none of the old rules applied. And obviously since we lacked the “passion and commitment” of our marching Woodstock attending parents, we would just give up and stay teenagers forever. But obviously that didn’t happen. Prognosticators underestimated just how much adolescence sucks, and ignored the fact that no one would willingly stay frozen in a place where you’re smart enough to know what you want, but too powerless to get it. So in an unexpected move we for the most part went the other way. My generation looked at what our parents were doing and decided to do our best to emulate our grandparents. Spirituality if not organized religion were considered better than navel-gazing and indecision. Patriotism even when we disagree with our government, in contrast to sit-ins and revolution. The practicality of changing things from the inside, chosen over the fatigue of the disappointed radical who never got the change they wanted. Family valued over career a “no-brainer” to a generation of latch-key kids who wouldn’t have minded more quantity time. Because parental love and attention is like fine wine or cheese. Only an expert can tell the good stuff from the grape juice and the Velveeta. To a kid all time spent with their parents is quality, and the more the better. Generation-X came of age and are raising their children in the shadow of the Global AIDS epidemic; Fundamentalist terrorism; Unfathomable poverty in the developing world; Genocide that no government will stop, so it is usually left up to individuals and privately funded non-profits; A rollercoaster economy that leaves serious doubt that we’ll ever be able to save for our own retirements, and a new potential environmental disaster or global plague looming over our heads every night on the nightly news. But we can’t whine. That is the job of the generation before ours.
Iraq is not a quagmire that costs thousands of American lives, untold numbers of dead and displaced Iraqis, and billions of dollars better spent elsewhere, it’s the “new Vietnam”. Because everything is about the Baby Boomers. Never mind that the Boomers are no longer the kids yelling at the grown-ups. That government that you think is on the wrong track, they look like them. Hey Baby boomers! The last sixteen years the guy making the decisions for better or worse was one of you. You chose him and he walked into that tackily decorated house with your interests in mind and your hopes on his back, so if you’re unhappy it’s not “Daddy’s” fault. It’s your idiot pot-smoking kid brother run amok.
What is it that we learned from you our parents? We learned drugs are good. As pot and LSD gave way to anti-depressants, its okay if everyone is doing it. We learned that “If you haven’t turned rebel by 20 you’ve got no brain, but if you haven’t turned establishment by 30 you’ve got no brain”. Even the socially conscious need to eat 200 different kinds of cheese, and have a vacation homes. We learned that something’s only a problem when it’s our problem. People rarely stomped their feet and threw tantrums about Social security when our grandparents were eating cat food and living in crappy nursing homes because they were too busy fighting commies, Nazis, and rickets to save for their golden years. But now that it’s the baby Boomers turn to sit on the front porch and talk about the weather it’s a crisis. More important than the education system that lets most of their grandchildren down to the point that few people if given the choice would send their children to the same public school they attended. And obviously it’s more important than climate change because even with the best medical care anyone can imagine all the baby boomers will be fertilizer before the really scary dessert dystopia sci-fi cannibalistic Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome days arrive. As long as the Boomers can afford their erectile dysfunction drugs and other assorted magic pills that extend life spans past the point where it’s pretty, everything else will just have to fall into place.
So to answer the questions I posed earlier…Why can’t we hold down a job? The boomers invented outsourcing and the pervasive attitude that there is always something better just around the corner that leads us to job hop. Traditional lifetime employment doesn’t exist like it did for our grandparents, few of you wanted to take a job at twenty-two and keep it for forty years. And very quickly anyone saying they planned to retire from their current job if they were under 50 became as ridiculously quaint as a recipe that contained lard. Next question, why can so few Generation-X and following generations finish college in under four years? Because once the boomers had finished college and then a rush of them went back later in life the largest segment of the population stopped being committed to college costs. “The kids could take out loans If they’re lucky. And work and save and do it a little at a time if they’re not”. And why can’t younger people get married and stayed married? Because we’re fragmented and damaged people who expect too much. Somewhere along the way dating was dropped for “hanging out“. And intimacy was traded for sexual conquest and experimentation. Having a lover was suddenly more important then being loved. I’ll be the first to admit that equality was lacking. But dating and intimacy were two things that had been working for a while and were doing an awesome job of keeping the human race going. We were told by our parents that when we grew up we could have sex without love, so like children allowed to eat cake for dinner, we have sex without love. We were taught that male/female gender roles were oppressive and bad so we tossed them out and now nothing gets done and everyone is confused. We were taught instant gratification by the generation that insisted on the microwave, the drive-thru window, and pills that make the sadness go away so you don’t have to feel it. And that “I want it now” attitude extends to everything, including money which may not make the world go round, but I triple dipple dog dare you to try to exist without it. No one saves for a house anymore when they can get one NOW and just have a 30 year mortgage on a house they’ll trade up for a more expensive one in five years. And then again and again. Everything bigger and better until they’re overextended. Such as it is. No one is perfect and we are destined to become our parents. We can fight it or we can embrace it. Just as long as the sight of themselves reflected in us doesn’t frighten them too much.

Okay Somebody actually gets it

Dottie is no longer waiting for the Great Pumpkin

Now that the election is over this blog will likely become less politically centered in the coming months. Each year around this time I watch the It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. And each year I empathize with poor Linus. He has faith in something he has never seen. But he is sincere and believes to even doubt for a second that he will come, would make the Great Pumpkin never come to the pumpkin patch. And although other kids laugh and he misses out on the Halloween party and the trick-or-treating he stays and he believes. That’s how I have always felt about politics. I believe in the will of good men. I believe that America is a good and just country. My paternal grandfather from my father’s limited memories of him was a bit of a scoundrel but no one would dare say he was a lost cause. People would just shake their heads and say, “He’s a good boy. He’s just mislead.” And that is how I feel about America. It’s an amazing country but it is just misled. So I’m hoping that now that the Great Pumpkin aka Barack Obama has come to bring treats and love and hopefully a healthy economy to all the good little boys and girls that believed in him, that we won’t be proven fools. Those who know me personally know my love life has been like the U.S. Government been comedic in its ridiculous failures. And for most of the two years that Barack Obama has been running his courtship of me the voter has reminded me of my romantic relationships. When I first saw him four years ago, I thought he had something. But he seemed to being going steady with the state of Illinois and the U.S. Senate so I didn’t really think it would go anywhere. Then I started seeing him around and I thought he was smart and funny and he started flirting with me. He took an interest in the things I liked i.e. healthcare reform, women’s rights, an end to the war and Iraq. So I started talking my friends’ ears off about him. “Do you think he’ll run for president?” and “Didn’t he look cute today?” And “Do you think he cares about a black woman in Utah the reddest state in the union?” My friends assured me he was interested in me and I should flirt back. So after he declared his candidacy for the presidency I gave him a $20 donation. Nothing too big, I didn’t want him to think I’m easy. I don’t give money to everybody. John Kerry and I did the “will they or won’t they” dance for six months before I gave him any money. And I only did it with him once and it wasn’t really all that good. But Barack started sending me emails and a sign for my yard and assorted other presents, mostly with his picture or name on them. What can I say? I like my men arrogant. You know like the kind of man who thinks he is qualified to be the most powerful man in the world. Now at this point if he was a potential boyfriend and not a political candidate he would have started seeing someone else, or told me he wasn’t interested in me, or just started ignoring me. But our relationship continued. He’d email me. I’d campaign a little for him. He’d do something to make me smile like trounce Hillary in a primary, and I’d send him another donation. Finally I’d met a man who was interested in my hopes and dreams and my fondest desires for a better world. And now I’m quite certain that we’re going to be a thing for a good long while. I sat around like Linus for my entire adult life waiting for my own Great Pumpkin, a man who actually understands me. And he actually showed up. I will no longer need my own blue blanket, liquor and feigned cynicism. But when it comes to cynicism I believe what George Carlin said, “Scratch any cynic and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.” Scratch and sniff me, I smell like Pumpkin.