Bigger. Better.

Connecting with my old high school classmates on Facebook has been an interesting exercise. Some of them I've wondered about a lot through the years. I've been pretty easy to find, having rode the wave of the interwebs longer than most people. But nobody ever found me.

Now, suddenly, they're all on Facebook, with their smiling children and spouses. Some divorced, some on their second marriages. And OLD. They look old. Not all of them, but some. And they all have normal hair! What's up with that? Didn't ANYONE retain their eighties-ness?

And I think about the eighties, and I feel sort of sad and wistful. Our childhood was certainly different than the kids I'm teaching now. Their lives are so...complicated. I graduated in 1990, and I don't think we had one pregnant girl in school the entire time I attended. This class I'm teaching has three. THREE. And gun scares and drug busts. I'm not saying my generation didn't do drugs. We did. I guess we just didn't get caught.

I worry about them. They have a ridiculous sense of entitlement, and a bizarre sense that the world is made up of pixels and .mp3 files. They do not go outside. When I was younger, I was outside every single night, playing with the kids on my street. My best friends all lived within ten blocks of each other. This generation's friends live across the country, or even across the world, and they have never met in person.

I can feel childhood innocence slipping away forever. Yeah, our parents said that too, that our generation grew up too fast. We did, but at least we knew it. We could feel the wind through our hair and just prayed for a safe landing. But this new generation is a flock of mini-adults, haughty and bitter about being made to go through all this "kid" stuff. They want to get it over with as quickly as possible so they can go on to bigger and better things, and their parents? Well, they just don't understand.

The Slacker Gene

I'm fucking exhausted. I am not used to this getting up at 5:30am shit, and I suspect I never will be. I'm not saying I could sleep til noon. I couldn't. I say I will, and I probably should once in awhile, but on the weekends I get up at around 8:30 and when I am up, I AM UP. I've never been one to lounge around in bed.

And getting to bed at night is virtually impossible as well. Since I'm student teaching all day, I get home and it's almost like I have to fill this quota of hours filled with nothing. So I get home and laze about, and fuck around on the internet and watch crappy reality tv until it's 10pm.

And yes, I'm tired and should be in bed. But it's like I have this weird Slacker gene that requires a certain amount of "nothing time" every day otherwise I feel like I'm going crazy. I need a lot of down time to function. A LOT. I actually worry about it, that this weird mutant behavior is costing me friendships and good times and productive output. Just so I can sit around like a zombie and, yes, sometimes blog.

Fear of Flying

All of my friends are getting married. I've heard people say this before, but they were always OLD people. But it's true, it all seems to happen at the same time. Some of my friends are already on their second marriages. But as far as this wave goes, I was first, in October, when I married Mr. X. Now it's April, and we have four weddings to go to between now and September. Four! Luckily Mr. X still has the shirt we got married in, so he will be okay for clothes. His idea of getting dressed up is putting on something that is nearer the top of "the pile", but his insanely good looks make up for any fashion faux pas he may make. Bastard looks good in anything. And nothing.

We do not have kids. Well, he does. "We" do not. His son is of driving age, and therefore more of a dude than a kid. We have a stable of weird pets that occupy most of our attention.

But I know my friends that are getting married will probably have kids, and that sort of sucks. I get the feeling that when my friends have kids, I will not be able to relate to them anymore. I will be talking about what happened on Breaking Bad the other night, and they will be talking about poo diapers. And speaking of, when did it become acceptable to talk openly about poo and its various forms, colors, and consistancies? In mixed company, no less? I know that parents have a whole lot of dirty work to contend with, and that is probably what desensitizes them to things that other people find gross or weird or uninteresting. That said, please do not tell me about your placenta. I'm all set.

I know a lot of very cool parents who have not lost who they are and what they stand for. And they have beautiful children who I adore. I shouldn't be worried that my friends will change, I should really be psyched that they are helping the world by breeding...one hip child at a time.

My life is in a constant state of flux. I'm always doing something, always learning, reading, doing some dumb crap just to cross it off my bucket list. I can't even fucking sleep sometimes because I'm scared I'll miss something.

I think when I fear that my friends are changing, it is really a fear that I might not be. The ultimate hurt. Spoken like a true Gen X.

Why?

I'm starting this blog as an outlet for the frustration I feel as a 37-year old JUST NOW facing college graduation and an entry into the workforce.

Yes, I'm a Generation X-er to the core, staying almost embarassingly true to the labels of slackerdom and entitlement that have been bestowed upon us by our much-beloved parents, who, I believe, are the last bastion of normalcy that this world will ever know.

In other words, it's all downhill from here, folks.