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The Curse of Twentysomething

John Mark Ivey



��It amazes me how much attention we the twentysomethings are getting from the mainstream media these days.
��If they’re not trying to make a movie for us, i.e. “Reality Bites” (didn’t see it), they’re trying to label us with some God-forsaken corny moniker. Like Post Baby Boomers (sounds too much like a cereal), Generation X (Billy Idol’s old band!?!), Apathy Babies (alliterates too well), twentysomething (a rip-off from that thirtysomething show) and Baby Busters (too gruesome, think about it).
��They keep saying we’re a lost generation, that we don’t know where we’re going, that we’re misunderstood. What’s there to understand? Half of us were latchkey kids who were baby sat by Curtis Mathes while the others were busy trying to keep up the with Baby Boomers that preceded us.
��I’ve faced that fact that we know entirely too much television trivia and are destined to follow in the footsteps of the Baby Boomers for the duration of our lives. I think at the root of our problem is having to follow the over publicized, over glorified and aforementioned Baby Boomers, who have been hogging massive amounts of the nation’s attention since WWII.
��I hate to admit it, but Baby Boomers grew up in one of the best periods in our nation’s history. They put the word “teenager” in the dictionary and changed the meaning of the word “cool” forever.
��Like any generation, Baby Boomers are best defined by the culture they were exposed the during their formative years. Unfortunately, we the twentysomethings are as well.
��Let me make my point more apparent.
��They grew up listening to the Beatles, and we had to hear Paul McCartney and Wings. They got John F. Kennedy, we got Jimmy Carter. They had Lassie, we got Benji.
��They lusted after Marilyn Monroe, we had to settle for Suzanne Somers. They played their Rock ‘N Roll, while we were collecting Disco records from K-Tel, New Wave cassettes, and Rap compact discs. They watched “American Bandstand”, we watched “The $25,000 Pyramid”.
��Baby Boomers envied Howard Hughes, we envied Donald Trump. They got “Satisfaction”, we got “Physical”. They hitchhiked to Woodstock, we watched Live Aid on MTV.
��They listened to Aretha Franklin in the back of their pink Cadillacs, we listened to Donna Summer in our little red Corvettes. They watched “Dragnet”, we turned to “T.J. Hooker”.
��They stuffed themselves into telephone booths and played with their hulahoops. We threw Frisbees and watched “Super Friends”. They liked Ike, we wanna be like Mike. They watched “Gunsmoke”, we watched “Fantasy Island”.
��They went to see “The Graduate” over and over again, we went to see “The Breakfast Club” over and over again until “St. Elmo’s Fire” came out. They got Jimmy Connors, we got Andre Agassi. They got Apollo 7, we got Space Shuttle Challenger. They had Little Richard, we got Prince.
��They cruised around in Ford Mustangs, we rode to the mall in Toyota Celicas. They got Ed Sullivan, we got Ed McMahon. They got Norman Bates, we got Freddie Krueger.
��They got Howdy Doody, we got Pee Wee Herman. They got Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio, we got Pete Rose and Billy Martin. They got Sean Connery’s James Bond, we got Roger Moore’s James Bond.
��They got the Doors and the Beach Boys, we got Kiss and the Bay City Rollers. They had Walter Cronkite, we got Geraldo Rivera. They had James Brown, we got Michael Jackson.
��They were inspired by the Rev. Martin Luther King, we try not to snicker too hard at the Rev. Al Sharpton. They got Andy Griffith, we got John Ritter.
��And they wonder what’s wrong with us. How can we compete with such a vastly different quality of cultural foundation?
��After all, Baby Boomers got advice from June and Ward just like the Beaver. We the twentysomething got our parental guidance from Mike and Carol and sometimes Alice just like Greg, Marsha, Jan, Bobby, Cindy, Peter and Bobby. I think that just about says it all, don’t you?




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