Generational Discussions

[Harmony]

OK...I think what bugs me the most about the OP is, well, other than calling generations names I've never heard, the first question asked is "Who do we blame-and why?"

Huh? Why are we blaming anyone for anything? This just perpetuates the spreading "victimhood".

Well, my fault for not being more obvious I guess - but it was said very tongue-in-cheek.  If you (anyone) spends any amount of time on social media - FB, Twitter, IG, TT - you see a boatload of Gen Z going after Boomers.  In fact, calling someone a Boomer is now a pejorative in nearly every sense.  I've been reading some of these threads and thinking about blame and who does it and how and why.  So when I asked, "Who do we blame and why?" it was a nod to that current trend.

Sorry for not being clear.  I didn't mean to "spread victimhood" if anything I meant to mock it.  That said, when we get away from the blame game, I find Gen Z and Millennials have some legitimate gripes that would be worthwhile talking about without the blame.

[Stadler]

I think a Hugh percentage of people  hange their thoughy process when they become parents, have mortgages and have bills. Priorities change.

They see youth, unmotivated to see their futures and talk about the youth being softer thank the past.  I'm guilty of that for sure.

I see it right now with my godson living with us. I see it in a new employee quitting on me to get a job at Foot Locker for less pay to get a discount on sneakers when he has 50 different pairs already and a child on the way.

Fact is, each person is different snd some mature and work because they have to support their families and some don't.

It's the circle of life through every generation.

One of the problems is the mechanisms.  I grew up with Bill Belichick, basically.  "Do your job".  "Figure it out".   I didn't have social media or Google or whatever.

I watch "Ridiculousness" religiously, but not an episode goes by where I'm not "why are they filming this?"  It seems such a waste to me.  But the reality is, we did dumb shit like that as well, we just had word of mouth to pass it on.   

We had a dog in the neighborhood last time it snowed.  My stepson felt bad, so we brought it in the garage.  Facebook, and 30 minutes later the owner was in my driveway thanking us profusely.  Past would have been to call the police or walk the neighborhood.   It SEEMS like it's easier, and easier is too easily confused with "lazier". 

it's a different way of looking at the world.  I'm in a deep philosophical debate with my kids now; I have 2,000 CDs and I've ripped almost all of them to a hard drive.  1.5 TB of music (I ripped the DVD/Bluray audio as well).   I just set up Plex so I can "stream" that music anywhere in the house (and even when I'm away, on my phone).   My daughter says "oh, let me download that app too so I can have the music.... hang on, here it is!  Spotify!"  . That stuff matters to me.  I have different versions of songs.  Different albums.  I suppose I could find all that on Spotify, but not all of it!  Couple UFO records aren't there!   I suppose it just doesn't matter to her, the same way that some of my dad's old cameras and slides and stuff didn't resonate with me.  Not better, not worse, not to be "blamed", just.... different. 

[King Postwhore]

I remember explaining to my mom how to use a VCR.  It was either, push the tape in and it will start playing or hit the power button and then put in the tape.

I'm close to that situation now. Lol

[Harmony]

Any Gen X'ers out there who remembers riding around the back seat of their parent's car without seat belts on?

Mom or dad would take a curve and you'd either slide into your siblings or they'd slide into you?

I was talking to a friend about this memory and they shared that once the back door flew open on the curve and they literally fell out of the moving vehicle.  And their mom pulled over to pick them up and yelled at THEM for falling out!

I thought that story pretty much summed up being a kid in the late 60s/early 70s.  And of course, every adult smoked cigarettes in the car.

[HOF]

Any Gen X'ers out there who remembers riding around the back seat of their parent's car without seat belts on?

Mom or dad would take a curve and you'd either slide into your siblings or they'd slide into you?

I was talking to a friend about this memory and they shared that once the back door flew open on the curve and they literally fell out of the moving vehicle.  And their mom pulled over to pick them up and yelled at THEM for falling out!

I thought that story pretty much summed up being a kid in the late 60s/early 70s.  And of course, every adult smoked cigarettes in the car.

I’m not old enough to remember cars not having seat belts, but we did all used to pile into the back of the family station wagon without seat belts all the same when we had too many passengers.

[pg1067]

Any Gen X'ers out there who remembers riding around the back seat of their parent's car without seat belts on?

Mom or dad would take a curve and you'd either slide into your siblings or they'd slide into you?

I was talking to a friend about this memory and they shared that once the back door flew open on the curve and they literally fell out of the moving vehicle.  And their mom pulled over to pick them up and yelled at THEM for falling out!

I thought that story pretty much summed up being a kid in the late 60s/early 70s.  And of course, every adult smoked cigarettes in the car.

I never wore a seatbelt until they became mandatory in California in 1986 (and even then, I resisted for a while).  Not only did I ride without a belt as a passenger as a kid, I continued not to use the belts from the time I got my learner's permit (roughly April 1983) until after the law went into effect.  In the car my mother had most of the time when I was growing up, we would buckle the belt (lap belt only) and shove it into the crease between the seat and the seat back.  We did that in order to keep the "fasten your seatbelt" beeper from beeping.  I definitely recall a couple times when I tried to sneak my belt on (either when a motorcycle cop would ride past me or when I was getting pulled over for something else).  I think I finally gave in around 1988 or 1989.

In high school, my best friend and I would ride in the back of his dad's pickup truck when he'd take us to our school football games.

[TAC]

I posted this a few months back, but here's a pic of a very young TAC in a front seat forward facing no headrest over the seat holder car seat.

[pg1067]

[Harmony]

Wow!!  What could possibly go wrong? 

TAC at least back then there were no front air bags.  Nevertheless, that car seat is a ticket to a cervical spinal cord injury.

[TAC]

Yeah it's funny. And you mentioned smoking. My parents both smoked and my mother still does. Smoking in the car was brutal. My mother had a VW Beetle, and it was brutal to be in that car to begin with.
And ashtrays all over the place!!

The worst was going out to eat, and my brother and I just wanted to get the hell out, but noooo, my parents had to have a cigarette right there at the table. WTF??

[Harmony]

I remember in the 80s I went to a fancy shmancy steak house with my parents and seeing an elderly woman eating a giant steak.  She had a forked up piece of the meat and a lit cigarette in the same hand and managed to drink from her martini with the other hand almost simultaneously while carrying on a conversation with her presumed husband.  I seriously have never forgotten the mental image of that woman because it was both fascinating and repulsive to me that she wanted to 'enjoy' a meal like that.

[Jamesman42]

I think we rode in the back of the car in the (at least early) 90s with no seatbelts, both parent smoking.

[KevShmev]

I still crack up at the scene in Mr. Mom when Caroline has her first day at work and goes to her first meeting in the conference room.  Nearly everyone is smoking and the room looks like a Grateful Dead concert.

[Cool Chris]

I grew up in a small residential area, and I rode around in the bed of my dad's truck all the time. One time my baseball team was in a tournament in a rural part of the state and he drive the entire team to dinner with us in the bed. He also let me drive it around the neighborhood occasionally when I was 14.

I just saw the other day"

The typical Gen-X household with a private retirement plan has $40,000 in savings; Across all members of the generation, some 40% don't have a penny saved for retirement.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/retirement-savings-401k-generation-x/

[Ben_Jamin]

But also...Vehicles were made of different materials than today. And some will argue that's why car's are not as safe because they're not made from steel and are made from plastics. 

[Jamesman42]

Y'all ever ride in the back of a pick-up truck while lying down and looking at the stars at night as it drove. Good memories.

[Ben_Jamin]

Y'all ever ride in the back of a pick-up truck while lying down and looking at the stars at night as it drove. Good memories.

The best times...

[Cool Chris]

Can't say I have memories of that. But it did spawn memories in being in the back of the pick-up in our sleeping bags at the drive-in.

[El Barto]

I posted this a few months back, but here's a pic of a very young TAC in a front seat forward facing no headrest over the seat holder car seat.

You had a car seat??? I didn't even know those things existed until the mid 80s.

We were all sit in the bed of the truck kids in my neighborhood. It was awesome.

[DragonAttack]

Y'all ever ride in the back of a pick-up truck while lying down and looking at the stars at night as it drove. Good memories.

The best times...

Gravel roads at 10 MPH, with guys (and some times gals) and a case of beer.  Certainly different times.

[jingle.boy]

I still crack up at the scene in Mr. Mom when Caroline has her first day at work and goes to her first meeting in the conference room.  Nearly everyone is smoking and the room looks like a Grateful Dead concert.

I scrolled by the opening of Fast Times a few days back ... and the dude taking the movie tickets telling everyone "smoking is upstairs to the right".   

[KevShmev]

[pg1067]

Yeah it's funny. And you mentioned smoking. My parents both smoked and my mother still does. Smoking in the car was brutal. My mother had a VW Beetle, and it was brutal to be in that car to begin with.
And ashtrays all over the place!!

The worst was going out to eat, and my brother and I just wanted to get the hell out, but noooo, my parents had to have a cigarette right there at the table. WTF??

I could not stand that.  Both of my parents smoked (it's likely what killed my father at 53).  I think my mother eventually stopped doing it in the car.  We didn't go out to eat often, and she'd usually refrain if she was the only one at the table (one of my sisters smoked for a while, but I think she had quit by the time I hit my teenage years).  The biggest joke was the "non-smoking section," which meant you only had to inhale the toxic clouds of people at other tables.

I remember in the 80s I went to a fancy shmancy steak house with my parents and seeing an elderly woman eating a giant steak.  She had a forked up piece of the meat and a lit cigarette in the same hand and managed to drink from her martini with the other hand almost simultaneously while carrying on a conversation with her presumed husband.  I seriously have never forgotten the mental image of that woman because it was both fascinating and repulsive to me that she wanted to 'enjoy' a meal like that.

I can quite literally picture that!  I think all of us who are 50ish and above have seen this at some point.

[King Postwhore]

Yeah it's funny. And you mentioned smoking. My parents both smoked and my mother still does. Smoking in the car was brutal. My mother had a VW Beetle, and it was brutal to be in that car to begin with.
And ashtrays all over the place!!

The worst was going out to eat, and my brother and I just wanted to get the hell out, but noooo, my parents had to have a cigarette right there at the table. WTF??

This was my parents house.  Ashtrays everywhere.  My mom would smoke out of the shower, both parents at the dinner table.  My friends said I smelt like smoke.  It was in my clothes.  My mom would get my laundry, wash, fold and put them away and I would yell at her for smoking in my bedroom.

I hate cigarettes to this day. 

[Adami]

Super glad my mom quit smoking before she got pregnant.

[pg1067]

This was my parents house.  Ashtrays everywhere.  My mom would smoke out of the shower, both parents at the dinner table.  My friends said I smelt like smoke.  It was in my clothes.  My mom would get my laundry, wash, fold and put them away and I would yell at her for smoking in my bedroom.

I hate cigarettes to this day.

Thinking about my friend group growing up...I'm not sure any of their parents DIDN'T smoke.  It's funny that, even around them, I was embarrassed that my mother smoked to the point of denial.  My best friend (whose parents both smoked) and I had to do a report on James Duke, and we were working on it at my house.  We were making a poster, and he wanted draw a pack of cigarettes.  He asked something like, "your mom smokes, right?" and I was all sheepish and said, "I don't know."   

My wife went to a foofy all-girls private high school nearly Albany, NY, and I was looking through one of her yearbooks, and the school actually had a "smokers club"...in the mid-'80s!  WTF?!

[TAC]

Yeah it's funny. And you mentioned smoking. My parents both smoked and my mother still does. Smoking in the car was brutal. My mother had a VW Beetle, and it was brutal to be in that car to begin with.
And ashtrays all over the place!!

The worst was going out to eat, and my brother and I just wanted to get the hell out, but noooo, my parents had to have a cigarette right there at the table. WTF??

This was my parents house.  Ashtrays everywhere.  My mom would smoke out of the shower, both parents at the dinner table.  My friends said I smelt like smoke.  It was in my clothes.  My mom would get my laundry, wash, fold and put them away and I would yell at her for smoking in my bedroom.

I hate cigarettes to this day.

My father quit 10 years ago and it still killed him. And it still wasn’t enough to make my mother quit.

[pg1067]

Yeah it's funny. And you mentioned smoking. My parents both smoked and my mother still does. Smoking in the car was brutal. My mother had a VW Beetle, and it was brutal to be in that car to begin with.
And ashtrays all over the place!!

The worst was going out to eat, and my brother and I just wanted to get the hell out, but noooo, my parents had to have a cigarette right there at the table. WTF??

This was my parents house.  Ashtrays everywhere.  My mom would smoke out of the shower, both parents at the dinner table.  My friends said I smelt like smoke.  It was in my clothes.  My mom would get my laundry, wash, fold and put them away and I would yell at her for smoking in my bedroom.

I hate cigarettes to this day.

My father quit 10 years ago and it still killed him. And it still wasn’t enough to make my mother quit.

My mother smoked into her mid- or late 70s.  I recall hearing about a visit she had to her doctor, where the doctor told her something like, "I'd really like it if you quit smoking, but I honestly can't see that it's impacting your health at all."  Supposedly, he was baffled by this.  She eventually smoked less and less and finally stopped 5-10 years before she died.  I don't know if the badgering from us kids finally wore her down or if it was just a natural thing.

[Jamesman42]

I also hate cigarettes but sometimes I will smell it in the air and nostalgia hits in a weird way.

[King Postwhore]

Both my parents had lung cancer and my mom passed from it.  Dad smoked 3 packs a day, mom smoked 2 packs a day.

It's sounds insane.

[Samsara]

The Greatest Generation – born 1901-1924.
The Silent Generation – born 1925-1945.
The Baby Boomer Generation – born 1946-1964.
Generation X – born 1965-1979.
Millennials – born 1980-1994.
Generation Z – born 1995-2012.
Gen Alpha – born 2013 – 2025.


Ok - which generation do we blame most and why?

Who had/has it hard?  Who had/has it easy?  And why?

If you could be a member of any generation which would you choose and why?

An interesting topic.

I am perfectly find being a Gen Xer. As I look back over history since I was a child through to my current age, I wouldn't trade anything. Perhaps I would have liked to have been born five years earlier (for some musical experiences), but that still puts me in Gen X.

I think each generation has had its challenges and successes. It's really tough to say which generation had/has a more difficult time. It varies. I am sure every generation feels like they have had difficult circumstances, and have achieved a lot of successful things.

I don't really "blame" anyone. Not really sure what we're "blaming" on anyone. Just a really difficult question. I laugh at the whole "Millennial" comments I hear, and even say sometimes myself, but it's mostly made in jest. At the end of the day, I think when each generation ages, they realize the challenges they face are just as difficult as the generation before them, and how similar we all, over time, really are.

I am not envious of Gen Alpha. While the advances in technology and successes I am sure they will all have will be incredible, I feel the challenges they will have to solve, overpopulation, AI, etc., are just mind-boggling, and I'm glad I'll be gone before those born in 2013 are my age now.

[MirrorMask]

What baffles me about smoking is how many young people STILL smokes.

I mean, I'm 43, our generation and our parents... I get it, it was just a thing. In Italy up until 2002 you were allowed to smoke indoors in bars and pubs. But young kids? there's a lot more of awareness, a lot more of information about the dangers of smoke, cigarettes cost A LOT, it's forbidden to smoke in like 95% of the places.... and young kids STILL smoke? what possesses them to say "hey sure, let's pick an expensive habit that everyone warned me about and that I will not be able to enjoy in basically every closed space I'll ever be in"? I don't get it. Sure, peer pressure, parents smoking and all of that. But as I said I was a teen in the '90s and nobody pressured me to smoke, I just didn't start. But I seriously don't remember anyone ever asking me if I wanted to smoke, or even worse, pressuring me to do so or make me feel excluded 'cause I didn't smoke. Heck, I feel excluded now as an adult whenever there's a bunch of coworkers at a social gathering who "go out to smoke" and you just miss out 'cause you don't smoke and there's no point in getting a coat and go outside to hang.

[Samsara]

What baffles me about smoking is how many young people STILL smokes.

Amen. Both my parents died due to cancer stemming from cigarettes. I've never smoked, never will, and really don't understand the whole smoking culture. No offense to anyone at all. But knowingly putting something fully proven to kill you in your body makes no sense. Sure, there are carcinogens in food, in a lot of things. But smoking is a choice that becomes an addiction. Don't make that choice, and you put years back on your life. I've never understood it. Never understood my parents doing it. I remember in the mid-80s, I came home from school and asked them to smoke outside after showing them everything. They did, thankfully. And my dad, several years ago before he passed, but after my mom passed, said to me, as he was undergoing chemo and radiation, "I should have quit when you told me to as a kid, Brian." God, I miss both of them every day, even though it has been years now. They'd likely still be here. My Mom died in her 50s from it. My dad got to his early 70s.

I know addiction is hard. But man, please, if y'all smoke, please try to stop. I want folks to live.

/soapbox

[Ben_Jamin]

This was my parents house.  Ashtrays everywhere.  My mom would smoke out of the shower, both parents at the dinner table.  My friends said I smelt like smoke.  It was in my clothes.  My mom would get my laundry, wash, fold and put them away and I would yell at her for smoking in my bedroom.

I hate cigarettes to this day.

Thinking about my friend group growing up...I'm not sure any of their parents DIDN'T smoke.  It's funny that, even around them, I was embarrassed that my mother smoked to the point of denial.  My best friend (whose parents both smoked) and I had to do a report on James Duke, and we were working on it at my house.  We were making a poster, and he wanted draw a pack of cigarettes.  He asked something like, "your mom smokes, right?" and I was all sheepish and said, "I don't know."   

My wife went to a foofy all-girls private high school nearly Albany, NY, and I was looking through one of her yearbooks, and the school actually had a "smokers club"...in the mid-'80s!  WTF?!

And before that, you only had to be 18 to buy beer...

[Ben_Jamin]

What baffles me about smoking is how many young people STILL smokes.

I mean, I'm 43, our generation and our parents... I get it, it was just a thing. In Italy up until 2002 you were allowed to smoke indoors in bars and pubs. But young kids? there's a lot more of awareness, a lot more of information about the dangers of smoke, cigarettes cost A LOT, it's forbidden to smoke in like 95% of the places.... and young kids STILL smoke? what possesses them to say "hey sure, let's pick an expensive habit that everyone warned me about and that I will not be able to enjoy in basically every closed space I'll ever be in"? I don't get it. Sure, peer pressure, parents smoking and all of that. But as I said I was a teen in the '90s and nobody pressured me to smoke, I just didn't start. But I seriously don't remember anyone ever asking me if I wanted to smoke, or even worse, pressuring me to do so or make me feel excluded 'cause I didn't smoke. Heck, I feel excluded now as an adult whenever there's a bunch of coworkers at a social gathering who "go out to smoke" and you just miss out 'cause you don't smoke and there's no point in getting a coat and go outside to hang.

Listen, my entire culture is based around Tobacco.

What I am against is the commercialization of Tobacco. How the Tobacco industry has utilized it and also has put chemicals in the cigarettes that are way worse than the actual tobacco inside. I also feel like the "Tobacco" in cigarettes are just paper with tobacco flavor drops added in.

That's why I stopped smoking cigarettes and am glad I don't anymore.