Friday, July 14, 2006

Slipping Two Steps Behind

Y'know, I just missed being in that hip new group called Gen-X by one year. I'm a baby boomer. Of course, so are my parents... and yet we are a generation apart. Anyway, I couldn't help but feel like I somehow got lumped with all the fuddy-duddies (sorry mom and dad). Now I've come to find out that my generation has been pushed down the ladder another rung. There's a new generation now, with its own hip name: The Net Generation. The N-Gen. N-Geners. And I'm several years out of that group... 13 years, to be exact. Bummer.

See, the N-Gen are those folk that can't remember a time when E-mail didn't exist. Or the Web. Or gaming. They have gadgets galore, and spend gobs of time online in various chat rooms, meeting places, communities and boards. They IM. Download music to iPods and MP3 players. They blog (hey, so do I!), and Vlog. They have screen names, become avatars. This N-Gen is a wired(less) engine. But cut me some slack. I may have had an electric typewriter and be able to remember a time when faxing was very avant garde. (At my first job, the fax machine was the high-tech way we exchanged information with business partners.) Yeah, and sometimes I called my bosses and verbally gave them stories I was filing from the road. But I'll tell you what, I can't imagine not being able to surf the Web, shop online or E-mail. So even though I'm two generations behind, I still feel closer to N-Geners than Baby Boomers.

Or maybe I'm just wanting to squeeze too tight on that slippery soap called youth.

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