2 Things Gen-X Did As Teens That Today’s Kids Will Probably Never Experience
Cottonbro | Pexels Adults think they remember what it's like to be a young person, but the reality is: they don't. Times change hard and fast, and what people in their 30s/40s/50s recall as "youth" has been extinct for a long time now. Everything gets harder, not easier.
Remember sock hops, muscle cars, and drive-in movies? Heck no, you don't remember that stuff. Because it's ancient. People who remember The Doors on Ed Sullivan or even Nirvana on Saturday Night Live, they have no idea what it's like to be a teenager today.
It's simply the way life works: Parents think they have a clue, and in turn, think their teens are wrong for thinking they don't have a clue. The truth? When it comes to most aspects of being a young adult, parents mostly have no idea what's going on. So in that vein, I thought it'd be cool to look back on my own Gen-X teenage years and talk about the things today's kids will probably never experience.
2 things Gen-X did as teens that today's kids will probably never experience:
1. Smoked cigarettes
Oh, behold the filthy habit. Go ahead, snarl, and curse. In my teenage years, cigarettes seeped into teenage consciousness the same way getting excited about someone scoring wine coolers and hiding them in a cardboard box in the woods behind the mall did.
I started smoking when I was 14 or 15. I'm not proud of it. I've quit a few times since I had kids, but in the end, I've always found my way back to the pack. Smoking's bad; everyone knows that. It's bad for your health and, even worse, it's bad for your image.
People tend to look at smokers like they're on drugs. They smugly walk by them, thinking to themselves, "Stay away from me, please! Please don't ask me for $1.77 for the bus ride back to Weehawken."
But smokers don't care. Screw you. I started smoking cigarettes because I wanted to feel cool about myself. I was a husky, long-haired, quiet type/not on any sports teams/no real girlfriends except one, my senior year, who only liked me after my younger, better-looking brother showed disinterest.
I was into Johnny Cash and Springsteen when other kids were into Top 40 and the birth of hip-hop. I was kind of gross-looking. I had fat braces. Of course, I started smoking cigarettes.
Cigarettes made me feel like I could finally identify with people. I fell in with the smoking crowd. We smoked outside the lunchroom. We smoked in the forest. We smoked, and we talked, and we bonded, and we understood each other as we lit each other's smokes. Adults would look at us and frown, and we felt massive.
I plan to make sure my kids understand that smoking cigs are the worst, that it will stunt their growth and kill them quickly, and make their peckers shrivel up into a wad of Sunday morning bacon. But if they do somehow end up smoking, one thing's for sure: I won't spazz out on them.
I'll probably steal their smokes and smoke them with a glass of chianti on the back porch some night. But I'll never shame them. Because there are bigger things to worry about.
2. Passed around contraband without worrying about it ending up on the internet
I use the term "Bob Marley Cassette" here instead of certain other words, so as not to have an adverse effect on my career. But the main reason is I like saying "Bob Marley Cassette" instead of w**d or p*t or gr*ss.
I can't remember who came up with the term; I think I muttered it to my friends as we walked around in the wilderness staring at rabbit tracks in the snow, but I can't remember. I was baked, dude.
But here's the thing: Kids these days are in a lot of trouble. They're surrounded by other kids who are losing their way, minute by minute, victims of a world where the pressure to be hot and cool and successful and self-confident has reached a fever pitch.
(We can probably thank the Internet for most of that, but that's another story.) I look back at my Bob Marley Cassette years as pretty great years. Yes, I fried some brain cells, but I also grew other new brain cells — very creative ones, actually — that spurred me on to pretty cool things. Things like garage bands and intense friendships and seeing a black bear cub in every single tree in the mountains of Pennsylvania one night, that to this day, I have a distinct love affair with black bear cubs.
Let's get real: Kids are going to experiment. I don't want mine to come anywhere near the insane modern dragon that is meth or the old cannonball around your neck that is coke. Even the LSD that runs in their veins from when you and I were the ones probably taking it, I don't want my kids anywhere near that wack stuff, okay?
Do I want my kids all up in Bob Marley Cassettes? Heckno. But it wouldn't make me weep or freak out, either. I probably won't spazz if my kids ever find out that I was a young, brace-faced, chubby, anti-hero in high school who happened to really enjoy his Bob Marley Cassettes. Everything in its time and place, mama. Everything in its time and place, daddy-o.
Serge Bielanko is a writer and musician who has been published on Babble, Huffington Post, Yahoo, and more.
