A Gen Xer and a Millennial Walk Into a Bar
Warning: this post contains obscenities.
SCENE
A bar.
“All Apologies” plays on the jukebox.
GEN X-ER:
I miss Kurt Cobain.
MILLENNIAL:
Who is Kurt Cobain?
GEN X-ER:
What the fuck is happening right now!?!?
This is no joke. It happened to me. Not at a bar because I’m too old for bars. (Do they still have jukeboxes?)
It happened at work, and the Millennial wasn’t even that young. She was one of those Millennials that remembers life before the iPhone.
Once, my Baby Boomer boss said, “Give me the Joe Friday.” I told him I didn’t know who that was. His head almost exploded.
Apparently, Joe Friday was a fictional character from the 1950s cop show Dragnet. Some may recall his catchphrase, “Just the Facts. Ma'am.”
(If my boss was trying to tell me to get to the point, he should have used a reference I understood. I digress!)
This will happen to you too, Millennials. In about five years, you will mention how much you loved that halftime show with Rihanna and some smug/clueless Gen Zer will ask, “Who is Rihanna?” And you will fall off your barstool a.k.a. mesh swivel chair.
This month’s picks are essay collections from two Generation X writers. Although these women both came of age in the 1990s, their style, topics, and analysis couldn’t be more different.
Check ‘em out!