Gen X refers to humans age 29 to 39. They were into Kurt Cobain.
Gen Y refers to humans age 14 to 28. They are into Paris Hilton.
I am a Baby Boomer so I don't care anything about them, really. They aren't Baby Boomers. Their soubriquet sounds like they were born in a high school chemistry lab--
Unlike my soubriquet which uses real words, albeit infantile ones. We were into the Rolling Stones...and apparently still are. (This confuses me. Is it actually possible we are still turned on by wizened, shrunken men in pink velvet?)
As to my interest in this Gen X and Y situation--
My two children fall right at the cusp, right at the dividing age groups. They are 27 and 29 respectively.
I read the article sort of carefully...in three sittings, over four days. It wasn't boring as such, but it was so crammed with overlapping subdivisions and descriptions of each Generation, they ended up sounding alike. I did glean they are technology maniacs, and they laugh at e-mail as being beyond passe...not exactly news breaking info. One tidbit I picked up about the Gen Y's was, as a result as having been coddled as children, they are "desperately afraid of making mistakes"...?
I am always impressed by the gurus of sociological statistics. Their pronouncements are definitive and self confident. Sociologists sound like how I spoke to my children when they were very young and it was important for their little psyches to believe I really had all the answers.
Anyway, in the end, neither X nor Y sounded like my children.
I was in the mood to have the matter set at rest for me, so I decided to go to the source and call them. I knew they would know. They are very up on their status in the world...which I agree is a vital piece of information to have. But, both were unreachable, this past week, either by cellphone, computer, or sheer mental telepathy.
My son, the 29 year old, was on a nine day silent retreat. Which means he was living like a monk. Soundlessly, okay? Short of dropping in via parachute to let him know the world had ended, he'd have absolutely nothing to say to me on the subject, nor, I suspect, strong feelings about the issue one way or the other.
My daughter, 27, was driving across the country, from Gainesville, Florida to Salem, Oregon, hauling a U-Haul, accompanied by her husband and their three pampered dogs, on her way back to law school. I knew how her day on the great highways of Texas and Mississippi and Alabama et al. had gone via her blog, so I knew without asking that if I chose to call, I may have been shortchanged in my answer.
So, sitting in lotus position behind the wheel of my car, I accessed, as any mother worth her salt can, a little of the moods they were both in. He on that higher spiritual plane, and she in the stoic acceptance of what is.
And I saw that blades of grass and gas stations make up the world, no matter who one's generation is.
And everybody sees the rainbow, hears the thunder, and believes in Santa Claus at some point in their lives.
