Plucky Gen X Female Speaks

The promise of college faded like my stone-washed jeans

My husband is a Boomer, the bastard.

He made more practical career choices than I — but this article is about how lucky he and his entire stinkin’ generation has been.

OK Boomers, let’s get started.

He graduated high school at the height of flower power and saw Pink Floyd in concert in 1971, but that’s only the beginning of my list of righteous grievances.

I was born after Pink Floyd already had their first disagreement, over who got the last jelly donut, which inevitably led to their break-up in 1985. Several weeks after I came mewling into this world, in the capital city of the greatest nation in modern times, America began falling apart.

It was winter, 1965. A year earlier, and I woulda been born a goshdarned Boomer.

Am I bitter? Yes. Yes, I am.

The 1970s passed before me in blur of harvest gold appliances and fondu dinner parties. My childhood of upper-middle-class white privilege spilled into rocky adolescence marred by low-quality weed and suburban angst.

I was too uncool for punk rock yet too sensible to follow the Grateful Dead.

I blame Ronald Reagan and my mother’s struggle with bipolar disorder, equally, for all of it.

There were good times: I saw Star Wars when I was 11, the ideal age. Plus, I had Depression-era parents who scrimped and saved, so I never had student loans.

If only I could resist the temptation to compare myself to my Boomer older sisters (born 1956 and 1958) and Boomer husband (born 1950), I wouldn’t be a clod of grievances and a whiny little tangle of petty jealousies.

If only.

Going back to school was never a good decision. I was like a drowning victim grabbing a buoy (education!) only to discover it’s a dead albatross that doesn’t float.

Let’s compare my Boomer husband’s career to mine, as painful as this exercise will be.

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