I turned 55 earlier this month. I’m at the speed limit age now. From that bit of information, I’m sure you can deduce my birth year was the Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-One. I’m squarely Gen X. I see in my scrollings on Facebook and Instagram that Gen X has a pretty noticeable presence online. I follow three separate content creators, and I love to hear their takes on the music of our time growing up as well as the things from our childhood and teenage years and I thought I’d give some of my thoughts on what it’s meant to be part of the Gen X crowd.

First off, most Gen Xers remember harsh physical discipline. Lots of reels talk about the difference between the “gentle parenting” of today and what we went through. I can’t relate though because I never got so much as a swat on the backside growing up. I was raised a de facto only child after my parents’ divorce, so most of my time and conversation was with adults. As a result, I adopted more adult ways and that wasn’t conducive to getting one’s rear end blistered. Long explanation short, I didn’t do anything much to deserve a spanking and the handful of times I did, it was around Granny Wham, and she wasn’t going to let anyone touch me. Now I did get paddled at school one time in the second grade for talking during nap time. Yes, we took naps in second grade; isn’t it grand? Mama found out when I went home and told her. She didn’t take it well. She took me all the way into school the next day and stopped by the principal’s office on the way in. I’d never heard Mama speak at that volume or use those words. I think it would have been different if they’d told Mama first, but I’m not really so sure.

One thing I did do in common with my Gen X comrades was the Saturday morning ritual. Saturday was Mama’s only day to sleep in so I was on my own from the time I woke up until she got up around ten o’clock. I filled the time productively by pouring myself a nice big bowl of Cocoa Pebbles or Cocoa Puffs, and turning on the Saturday morning cartoons. It was a great way to spend a morning. I’d watch Looney Toons and Thundarr the Barbarian and a host of other half-hour shows from eight o’clock until Bill Cosby and the Cosby Kids came on at 11:30 AM. They were the last cartoon of the morning on the clearest channel we got, but sometimes I would watch Pink Panther through a little static snow. Either way, once they went off at noon, it was time for Mid Atlantic Championship Wrestling! I spent the next hour cheering my heroes in the “squared circle” and booing the bad guys. Mama would watch with me while she folded clothes, and I think she got as much entertainment from me as she did from the show.

Another thing I shared along with my compadres was the mandate to be outside. Saturday morning cartoons were the only acceptable time to watch TV on a day off and once they went off, my friends and I were expected to be outside. I would ride my bike in my slow fat kid pace over to the Willis boys’ house and we would play all sorts of ways. We’d go on grand adventures in the woods behind their house, or maybe if the weather was right, we’d go fishing. Sometimes we’d go to their grandmother’s house up the road a ways. I loved their grandmother, but I hated getting there because I couldn’t keep up on my bicycle. They were all just too speedy for me and any size hill resulted in a dismount and walking my trusty two wheeled steed up to the summit. Summertime and vacations from school were no different. No matter how hot it was outside, we were out in it from morning to evening. We did get our water from the garden hose, which is a great way to get stung on the lip by a yellow jacket by the way, but unlike what I hear from the Gen Xers on line, we did get fed around noon. Whichever mom’s house we were at would make us some variety of sandwich and pour us up some sweet tea or Kool-Aid to wash them down with. We didn’t go hungry.

I remember when the first Atari 2600 came out. The Willis boys got one the Christmas they came out. We weren’t allowed to play on it during daylight hours. That was for being outside. When night feel though, we could come inside and after supper play Combat and Pitfall until our thumbs ached. It was the same several years later when the original Nintendo showed up. We’d try to sneak in and play during the day in the glorious air conditioning, but inevitably, we’d get caught and shooed outside. I was and to this day still am, hopeless on a video game. I was fairly good at some of the arcade stand up games we could play at the mall and in some stores in Fountain Inn when I was with one of my papas, but home consoles were the death of me. I got laughed at a lot.

That was something else about our growing up I shared with the online Xers. You had to have a thick skin. Sensitive kids need not apply. Whatever was different about you would be a target of ridicule. Mine was my weight and pale skin. I was easily sunburned and I was fat for a kid so I was given the nickname at play and at school of The Great White Marshmallow. You know, it stung a little at first, but the difference between that kind of ribbing and out and out bullying was nicknames and such weren’t malicious. No one was trying to hurt you or your feelings. It was just a way of showing where you stood in the pack. Now we did have bullies. We had some terrible bullies. Unlike today, there was no zero tolerance policy or anything like it to protect people from getting bullied. Teachers were notorious for turning a blind eye to some pretty bad stuff. I got a little crap because of my weight and because my parents were divorce, but nothing like some others I knew. In our jungle, the only way to defang a bully was to stand up to them. I saw some much smaller guys get fed up and take on some bullies. Thing was, you didn’t have to win. The act of resisting showed you weren’t a victim. The same teachers who turned a blind eye to getting bullied were also just as blind when a playground bully got his just desserts as well. Unlike today, we had to sort our problems out on our own.

I don’t remember everything fondly about those times though. For one thing, mental health wasn’t paid much attention to. I know today if a child or teen seems “off” it won’t be long before they are in some kind of therapy, and rightly so. Wasn’t that way when I was growing up. You pretty much had to figure it out on your own. Childhood and teenage depression weren’t talked about and I don’t know when it changed, but they weren’t even acknowledged to exist when I was coming up. I know I would have benefitted from talking to someone. My parents’ divorce when I was small did a number on me mentally. I went mute for several months. I wouldn’t go outside no matter how much I was coaxed, and I withdrew from my friends. All I wanted to do was sit in a corner of the couch and read and deal with a sadness I couldn’t articulate and that no one tried to help me through. I was told, not unkindly, that it was part of life and I just had to get through it. Years and years later when I started going to my excellent psychiatrist and psychologist, I talked to them about that experience. They both said similar things. At the time, children’s mental health wasn’t understood well, if at all, and even if the adults around me had tried to get me help, there wasn’t really any help to be had. It was just the way of the times.

One last thing I’ll discuss about how different things are now that from when I was a kid is working. I got a job the day after I turned fifteen and worked until I went on disability thirty years later. Barely missed a day. Most of my friends worked a job. Grocery store bagging and stocking was my chosen vocation. I’ve got to be honest, I’ve never enjoyed a job as much as I did working at Community Cash bagging groceries and stocking the canned veggies aisle. Now though, I don’t see teens working as a general rule. Sure, some do, but for us it was expected. I never got an allowance at any time growing up. If I wanted to put gas in the car my father so kindly bought for me and my mother kindly paid the insurance on, I had to earn the money. It was just how it was. I’m not sure what changed, but I know today’s generations don’t seem to have the kind of work ethic we did, but I don’t think it’s a mark of character, I just think the times have changed.

Now I could go on for pages, but I’m going to leave it here. I may pick up on the topic in a later post. I think I’d like to talk about all the things we were scared of in our Gen X child and teen years and how it’s different from today, but that’s a story for another time. So keep your feet clean, and know I love y’all!