There are a lot of us in the mid-Gen X range. Pre-millennials. Children born in the lead-based 70s. Early 90s high school graduates coming of age in a time of endless recessions. And night vision wars glowing on the television.
Growing up with Saturday cartoon schedules and Sunday morning newspaper comics. Muppets and puppets teaching us basic humanity. Specials broadcast into our heads after school. Learning how to be good neighbors from a sweater.
But they never taught us how to cope with Embassy hostages. Or Lennon getting shot. Then Reagan, who recovered to champion a surge of stupidity in the War on Drugs. And then to oversee the dedication of a black granite scar cut into the capital’s hillside. The one bearing the names of 58,320 broken promises; the ones that we were not really allowed to talk about.
We had the most standardized testing. Covering topics not even taught anymore; Pluto was still a fucking planet. Schools arbitrarily banning our hats. And favorite colours. Switching over to closed campus lunches, which left most of us thinking: “What the hell? This is dumb.”
Because the things being done on our behalf were stupid. And not well thought out. Like suddenly rating things PG-13. The arbitrary appearance of useless warning labels on our music; the initial grumblings and protests about the escalating violence in our video games. Witnessing the start of helicopter parenting for those younger than us. Leaving the older ones to wonder why the hell the rules had suddenly all changed.
With no real voice, we learned to shut our emotions down. And that stoicism prevented us from snapping at the school staff. Or our parents. Expulsion was always looming; grounding was a death sentence in the days before the Internet.
We also experienced the beginning of real gore in movies, despite the gerrymandered ratings. We consumed more porn, with easier access, than previous generations. And, we were brutally honest. About everything. No sugar coating anything. We understood how to be brief and on point. Even if our lingo wasn’t politically correct when measured against modern standards.
We adapted quickly. Staying ahead of trouble somehow. The original latchkey kids watching the Berlin Wall fall. And the Challenger blowing up.
We witnessed the tail end of the Cold War as the world around us heated up. Acid rain. Dealing with our parents’ casual generational racism. And their constant buying of technology that they just couldn’t wrap their heads around.
Pagers beeping onto the scene. Pre cell and smartphone. Witnessing the death of MTV as Yo! MTV Raps and the Headbangers Ball were cancelled. Leaving a gap for pop music to rush in. And not the fun kind of pop. But the pre-manufactured, corporate cookie- cutter crap kind.
Tuning in as true Rock and Roll nearly died. Listening as Gangsta rap took over as the de facto cool kids party sound, with Dr. Dre and his G-thangs. Surviving the drive-bys. And the scourge of the crack epidemic. Dodging AIDS, s.t.d.’s, and all the Satanists who never quite materialized.
The previous generations religiously painted our world in fear. They constantly bellowed their cautions at us, the same ones often gleaned from their new 24-hour news cycles, as we snickered behind their backs.
Then they released us wild out into those same dangers. And expected us to excel at the American Dream. Demanding that we accomplish more than they had. Even though we had started with far less.
There was a significant barrier between us and them. Some great, indefinable division that we never quite understood. But against which we were forced to struggle for the entirety of our formative years. It was a clear and present partition. Just like that ugly wall, snaking its way across the heart of Berlin.
The Berlin Wall was already there when we were born; we started in a world in which we only ever knew two Germanys. East and West. Good and Evil. Nato Blue and Socialist Red. And most of us grew up being taught to hate the Russians.
Though more subtle than the methods the Soviets were known to employ, we were still indoctrinated in our youth. The gist of which was that anything having to do with Communism was immediately America’s mortal enemy. And a significant threat to the stability of the world as whole. A world filled with siloed Minutemen and Voevodas targeting each other in an untenably M.A.D manner.
We were manipulated into how to perceive the ever-looming dangers lurking behind the secrecy of that Curtain of Iron. Red Dawn for us was serious business; War Games was the better after school special. Because in our naivete, we actually believed those things could happen. And a lot of us watched the skies for those invaders, when not trying to use first generation computers to hack into something more interesting than the family’s files.
Lots of things changed in anticipation of those threats. Among them was our vernacular. New phrases and strange words like “Checkpoint Charlie,” Perestroika, and MIRVs joined in the conversation.
Those words helped to define different worlds with their conflicting ideologies. Democracy versus Totalitarianism; freedom versus subjugation.
And when it all suddenly came crumbling down in that fall of 1989, we were left with a communal sense of “What the hell just happened?” Because the changes came at us quick in the upper 80s. Right when we were on the cusp of our graduations into adulthood.
It was admittedly strange, suddenly not having to hate the Russians. It felt similar to breaking ties with a romantic partner. One with whom was shared a long and complicated history. But by virtue of circumstance, both sides are forced to live on the same block. And occasionally interact, depending on the events occurring in the neighborhood.
The collapse of the Berlin Wall left a vacuum into which other threats soon rushed. But they never seemed quite as big. Or as tangible. At least not until the towers came tumbling down.
We were kids born of the Cold War; we were raised under the constant specter of instant annihilation. And that uncertainty, I think, is what taught us the most. At least those of us who fucking paid attention.
We learned a little too early that if you blink, it might all just all evaporate in a millisecond of bright light. So it didn’t really matter that the politicians lied indiscriminately. Or that our parents would never be able to understand the unique brutality of our childhoods.
Because we were children born of war.
And we built walls of our own, when the one over in Berlin fell.
Just remember, X always marks the lost.
So…“Party on, Wayne. Party on, Garth.”
Because we might not be here tomorrow…
