Forty
2015 makes it official. Mid-70’s born babes are turning 40.
1975 seems to be an odd year to be born. Smack in the middle of the disco decade, our parents who had grown up hippies or straight, were all in bell bottoms and polyester at this point. We (basically) were not alive for the Vietnam war but Saturday Night Live has been on NBC our entire lives.
We are the very tail end of Generation X. We really don’t remember the 70's, spent our formative adolescent years in the 80’s, but still are 90’s kids because we didn’t graduate high school until ’93.
It’s almost like a year lost in transition.. way too young to relate to Fast Times at Ridgemont High but not quite old enough to fully know the experiences from Reality Bites. We remember the first day of MTV, but also not don’t really remember a time before MTV. There no single decade, generation, or type that we can really claim our own.
We basically missed the money and fun of the dot com boom, maybe hitting the very tail end of it during college internships. Our first jobs out of college may have had offices with red walls and a ping pong table, but the 30 year old CEO had been kicked out during the bust and the big salaries we expected upon graduation had dried up. We are old enough to always have some kind of computer in our lives, but also remember a good chunk of young adult life cell phone less.
We have tramp stamps, dolphins, moons and “tribal” tattoos. Many of us also have half closed up belly-button piercing that we got when our parents still thought it meant we were into “crazy sex things” and years before they started selling belly rings at Claire’s in the mall.
We’ve been told for years that 40 is Fabulous! 40 is the new 30! 40 is your PRIME. But I know a lot of us don’t really feel that way. We are fighting gravity and anxiety while raising kids in a time where we can’t even leave them in the car alone to run in to get our dry cleaning without fear of being arrested. The president is still “considerably” older than us, but our doctors are suddenly younger than us.
So here we are.
40 years later, one thing we can all agree upon is that we finally understand the Talking Head’s song Once in a Lifetime. You know, the one that we've known our entire lives as it was played over and over on MTV that first August in 1981 when at 6, we were mesmerized by music videos and our parents had no fear of “too much screen time.”
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack And you may find yourself in another part of the world And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself Well…How did I get here?
*I have 3 more months of my thirties. While I would love to say that I have big plans for these 3 months — posts! pictures! pounds! — the reality is that before I know it I’ll be blowing out the candles on my cake and embracing my next decade. I also need to note that my mom will argue that she never wore polyester in the 70's.
