Dunno what to write. I’m empty. Just finished a 10,000-word story. Sucked everything outta me. Dried me up and tossed away my husk. Now here I am, trying to revitalize. Trying to regain my wind and start from scratch. I know it’ll take a few days. But I want it now. That’s my generation’s defining complex. Perversion of entitlement, I call it. That’s us, that’s Generation X. Subsequent generations, too. But we started it.
(Warning: sweeping generalizations to follow. Maybe one or two already.)
As children, we had everything we could want. Our baby-boomer, doctor-lawyer-executive parents had caught a virulent strain of the (North) American Dream, and we Gen Xers grew up with the symptoms: two-car garages, cottages, kidney-shaped pools in the backyard, two- and three-figure allowances, computers, video games, VCRs, pay-tv, bitter divorces, two birthdays, two Christmases . . . in short, excess. And lots of it. So we Gen Xers coasted into “adulthood” in the recession-riddled nineties, and it was like the carpet being pulled out from under our feet. We may have been educated up the wazoo, but really, we were facing a dead end: no job prospects, no savings, no property, nothing. Just that education up the wazoo, maybe a corresponding student debt, and the parent(s) we could always go back and live with for a while, just until the cloud passed . . . yeah, yeah, the deceptive lure of home’s stunting comforts . . . How could we establish new places to call home when we had neither moolah nor moxie enough to leave the homes of our parent(s) for ones of our own?
(Warning: totally arid and possibly spurious generalizations to follow.)
The answer: We rented. Rented for years. Put close to a hundred grand into someone else’s mortgage over the next decade without coming close to actually owning anything. Lived paycheck-to-paycheck, knowing that if the bottom ever fell out, we could always — sigh — move back in with the folk(s). But so long as we didn’t, so long as we could afford to stay away, we Gen Xers forged homes of our own. Even if we didn’t have two-car garages or cottages or kidney-shaped pools in the backyard, we had the Internet. We had video games. Home entertainment systems. Satellite TV. Five- and six- and even seven-figure salaries. Bitter divorces. Two Christmases (plus Hanukkah and Kwanza). Cellphones and ATMs and fast food on every corner, for every other meal. We had everything we wanted. Because we’d been conditioned to want shallow and technological and sarcastic and chemical distractions. Not just want them; expect them. Even with time, such early and effective conditioning is tough to break. Some of us strive for advancement or enlightenment; many of us avoid any attempt at improvement if it requires real effort, falling back on a default assumption that without lifting a finger, we’ll somehow still get what we want: shallow and technological and sarcastic and chemical. (Perhaps there’s an equation in nature, a ratio — crudely put — of deadbeat citizens to conscientious citizens. The relation seems to be consistent across human populations.) That’s us, that’s Generation X. Which now we can presume stands for Generation Expectation. Perversion of entitlement. We started it.
3.3.09
Update
Good evening and welcome to Channel 12 News at 6. In our top story today, a plane did not crash into the Bay of Bengal, not killing all 155 on board. According to reports, the plane made a safe and routine air crossing of the Bay during its flight from Madras to Mandalay. Said the pilot, “I’m sure glad I know how to do this, otherwise it mighta been difficult.” One passenger, wishing to remain anonymous, revealed that the in-flight meal was a choice between kidney pie and tilapia.
In our top local story, this afternoon at a west-end subway station a woman was not pushed in front of a subway train. Please be warned that this story contains graphic images and descriptions. Several witnesses claim that the woman was standing on the yellow strip, close to the edge of the platform, as the 4:12 eastbound entered the station running ninety seconds late. A witness describes the moment: "Here comes the subway, and there she is, standing right on the yellow strip, watching the subway get closer, minding her own business, and all of a sudden no one pushes her! It’s an image I’ll live with forever." The woman, who survived the ordeal, went to a nearby Emergency Department seeking a sedative. The subway crew will receive trauma counselling, including the driver, who was inches away from the windshield when the woman’s body didn’t splatter against it. No one has been apprehended and no motive has been suggested.
In gun news, several people around the city were not shot and killed today. Our voice on the street, Richard Drizzle, has more. Richard?
“Thanks, Ming-Poon, yes. In this amazing development, each individual in question apparently suffered the same fate, namely, not getting shot and killed. I’ve spoken with several of the non-victims, and each one has a different story. I’m just going to play some quotes from my tape recorder here.” (click)
VOICE (woman’s): You hear about it happening all the time and you never think it could be you.
VOICE (man’s): Used to be that you could walk these streets without worrying about not getting shot. Now when I walk these streets, I worry.
VOICE (man’s): I ride the TTC every day. All of a sudden, these last few months, all these people not getting shot on the TTC, not getting pushed in front of trains, I’m thinking maybe I’ll find another way to get around.
VOICE (woman’s): As if parents don’t have enough to worry about, now they’re constantly living in fear of the possibility of their children not getting shot at school.
“As you can hear, a lotta fear and frustration. The citizens of this city have been crying out for something to be done to make the streets unsafer. And if they don’t get what they want, this being an election year, Mayor Milker might be looking for a new job soon. Back to you, Ming-Poon.”
Thank you, Richard. God knows I’m not paid to editorialize, but what the kelly is happening to our city? Anyway, turning to sports, here’s Ratso.
In our top local story, this afternoon at a west-end subway station a woman was not pushed in front of a subway train. Please be warned that this story contains graphic images and descriptions. Several witnesses claim that the woman was standing on the yellow strip, close to the edge of the platform, as the 4:12 eastbound entered the station running ninety seconds late. A witness describes the moment: "Here comes the subway, and there she is, standing right on the yellow strip, watching the subway get closer, minding her own business, and all of a sudden no one pushes her! It’s an image I’ll live with forever." The woman, who survived the ordeal, went to a nearby Emergency Department seeking a sedative. The subway crew will receive trauma counselling, including the driver, who was inches away from the windshield when the woman’s body didn’t splatter against it. No one has been apprehended and no motive has been suggested.
In gun news, several people around the city were not shot and killed today. Our voice on the street, Richard Drizzle, has more. Richard?
“Thanks, Ming-Poon, yes. In this amazing development, each individual in question apparently suffered the same fate, namely, not getting shot and killed. I’ve spoken with several of the non-victims, and each one has a different story. I’m just going to play some quotes from my tape recorder here.” (click)
VOICE (woman’s): You hear about it happening all the time and you never think it could be you.
VOICE (man’s): Used to be that you could walk these streets without worrying about not getting shot. Now when I walk these streets, I worry.
VOICE (man’s): I ride the TTC every day. All of a sudden, these last few months, all these people not getting shot on the TTC, not getting pushed in front of trains, I’m thinking maybe I’ll find another way to get around.
VOICE (woman’s): As if parents don’t have enough to worry about, now they’re constantly living in fear of the possibility of their children not getting shot at school.
“As you can hear, a lotta fear and frustration. The citizens of this city have been crying out for something to be done to make the streets unsafer. And if they don’t get what they want, this being an election year, Mayor Milker might be looking for a new job soon. Back to you, Ming-Poon.”
Thank you, Richard. God knows I’m not paid to editorialize, but what the kelly is happening to our city? Anyway, turning to sports, here’s Ratso.
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