An Open Letter to the Young People We Bitch About
Sorry, We Were Trying Something…
Dear Young People,
I’m an increasingly curmudgeonly Gen X. I’ve taken my chances, paid my dues and all that and you people piss me off!
I walked to school through blizzards. I was given a key when I was 5 and told to come home to an empty house and peel the potatoes and brown the hamburger for supper. Okay, I wasn’t, but my friends were.
I learned to beat the ass off my bullies, not find a safe space.
My “feelings” didn’t matter if I lost a race or didn’t make the grade. Kids were held back if they didn’t learn stuff. Literally held back, as in, had to repeat the grade and suffer the indignity of walking into school a year behind all their friends.
We played ball. One team won and the other…wait for it, didn’t win. They lost. Yeah, lost. There were winners and losers. One team went to McDonalds with a trophy and free burgers. The other one went home.
We mowed lawns, shoveled snow, and babysat for extra money. We played outside, for hours on end, in the woods and shit.
Then, we got jobs. Crap-ass jobs where some moron who’d been there since 1965 and lacked any discernable brain activity bossed us around because they were…ya know…
