What is 31 but 365 days into my 30s? It sounds like alot but it’s only 10% of this middling decade.
And what are my 30s but that silvery sliver of a decade when I’m still considered young by all the olds, looked upon with a curious mixture of wonder and scorn by those in their 20s, and (dis)regarded as a mess of anachronisms and hopelessly outdated notions by those teens and tweens whom I’m not related too. Give children and pets candy and attention and they won’t discriminate based on age.
Regardless of my relationship with pets of any species know this: I have history. Knowledge and experiences you youngsters couldn’t possibly understand, no matter how much you get into retro, ‘ironic’ styles. And you olds, just forget it, you are even less able to understand. Go read a book.
I’m talking about my generation. We were on the cusp. We grew up on the brink of new ideas and watched, touched, and used new stuff and new ideas and fads and technology. Plus we lived back in the olden days, when ‘wireless’ was still just a type of radio. I’m talking about the 1980s, and the 1990s.
Know this:
My first piece of formal wear was a red plastic tie purchased at the novelty shop ‘San Francisco’ aged 8.
I know how to bush party.
I skateboarded years before it was a video game.
I remember home phones before there were answering machines. (If you think this experience predates cellular technology, you are correct.)
I had a pager.
And a dot matrix printer. And a minidisc player.
I made plans for Y2K looting, and indulged in a cocktail of mayhem on the dawn of the new millenium.
What’s the point of all this bragging? The point is: all the people who were born in 1977 are turning 31 this year, same as me. And that fact is not something for all you non-31 year olds to get so high and mighty about.
Because we’ve seen both sides: before email, cell phones, and GPS, we were there, fighting and fucking and dancing and writing letters with a pen. Reading encyclopedias written by experts and categorized alphabetically.
And yet we’ve been quick to take up this technology too, despite not having grown up with it. We’ve ridden the donkey, and the lightning.
Technically this doesn’t apply only to people who are 31, but it does apply to me. And I’m 31.
There, I said it.
