Unearthed jewel No. 3….being a Gen X’er. I am so proud to be a Gen Xer.

I think we are one of the best generations ever! We are a resilient bunch. The latch key kids! I say this in the most literal sense. I distinctly remember lifting up the brown and white mingled indoor/ outdoor carpet of my grandparent’s patio to retrieve their house key to find a baby snake wrapped around it! I dropped the carpet and ran to get the neighbor (who rented a single wide from my grandparents) to help me –in my latch key kid dilemma! We are the kids of mothers who were burning their bras, who attended Woodstock or in contrast, every Sunday service and tent revival, smoking cigarettes while learning to pump their own gas. Paving the way of working full time while being expected of showing up on Easter with perfect clothing for themselves and their children. The children who were fathered by men who went to Vietnam and saw things that were unimaginable. The fathers who were spat upon when they returned from a war (as my father was) they were forced to attend. We are the kids who rode bikes way farther than we ever should have been allowed to without helmets. The kids of multiple divorces and paving the way of being a step child. What was this new role in our society to be? The kids who understood we were replaced at times with new children who might have took center stage. A different mother and father whom we were automatically supposed to love. Now it is all about “the kids” and what’s best for the kids… as it should be. The safety of children should always be of up most importance. It’s that way… because us Gen Xers! The ones who endured the hardship’s of being in the divorced situations that were never there before. We paved the way for determining what a stepchild should be. How a stepchild should be treated. It was a hard trail to clear with fallen trees, hills, stumps, switch backs, and rugged terrain. Many of us endured things we never should have. We were all the redheaded stepchild! Honestly…. I am grateful for those hardships in some ways and resent them in others. I now understand the toll societal and economical expectations can have on the American family. What was being expected of my parents on a macro level. I understand more than ever now because I fully feel what this economy is expecting of me. I am a professional educated woman who can not afford a small home on her own. Not without the sacrifice of many things… things that society tells me and my children what they should expect from life. A small home that in my 20’s— I was able to buy on my own. I did buy on my own when I was attending college and working full time. It’s as if things have gone backwards instead of forward in some regards. Our mothers who burned their bras and said, “fuck it,” showed us how to be tough, work hard, and make ourselves happy. Now we can’t because of this economy. It’s as if we are now back to the women of the 1930’s and 1940’s but have to work full time and do all the other house hold duties at the same time! Our work has doubled or maybe even tripled. We need to help our kids with the astronomical cost of college, worry about their future ability to own or even rent a home and afford groceries. I am a Gen Xer…. a latch key kid, one who wore premed hair, lots of blue eyeshadow and worked my ass off. One whom my kids make fun of when I can’t turn on the TV but have no idea how much I have adapted to technology with being 99.9% self taught. I let them make their jokes while I know they they have no idea of the trails I have cut, the paths I have made for their generation. I know they face their own obstacles. I know they are equipped for them. Despite us trying to give them the perfect birthdays, backpacks, hairstyles, and everything else in between, I hope they make this world a better place despite our generational short comings.