We are the in-betweens. Those of us between the ages of 35-45 don't really belong to any group. We are technically eighties kids but were too young to get the entire eighties experience. Most of our growing up occurred in the nineties. Many of us went from elementary school to high school during this decade. Their isn't much reverence for the nineties, certainly not as much as the eighties. And the late nineties was truly an awful time for music and a lot of television. We, the lost generation, also have a toe in the pre and post internet worlds. We grew up for half of our lives without the internet, or perhaps with a very rudimentary form of it. And we are alive during the internet age. The lost generation remembers the era before we used Facebook, Instagram and X (Twitter). Our first cell phones were flip phones, and we all had the same phone, especially when the Razr came out. We, the lost generation were around for the genesis of Netflix and lamented the loss of video rental stores. We remember rushing off to Blockbuster Video, Hollywood Video or our local rental establishment hoping that the new release would be there. Or better yet, that they video game that we craved would be available. There was something magical about finding a copy of NBA Jam that was not out on rental. Kids today will never experience that feeling. Everything is available at the touch of a button (and a subscription fee). Remember the pre-9/11 world. I certainly do. Everything changed on the fateful day. We were at the end of our childhoods and at the very beginning of becoming an adult. The world suddenly wasn't all sunshine, rainbows and buttercups. Sometimes I like to revisit the world of my childhood. Mainly through video games and old commercials. They bring back a sense of peace and calm. I can almost transport myself back to that era, when our only worry was, once again, if our desired video game was at the local rental establishment. We've lost so much over the past few decades. The internet has been both a blessing and a curse. It's made people fight over the most trivial of things. It's caused the emergence of "celebrities" that in the past would be unknown (I'm looking at you Social Media Influencer). What I'm getting at is that our age group doesn't really fit in. We grew up in two worlds. We weren't born into the digital age yet we are young enough to live in it while remembering its emergence. We aren't truly eighties kids, although we were born during the decade. So what are we? We are the lost generation. In the world of politics, we are not as left as many twenty and early thirty year old Americans. And we may lean right but maybe not as much as the boomer generation (maybe that's why the Libertarian party has so many members around my age). We are the generation of just-missed and too-late. Times are changing at a much too fast rate. We are bombarded with a multitude of new terms, words and phrases. We have men that supposedly can have periods and women who have male body parts. It's not that we are against this sort of stuff, to each their own (unless it involves kids). But maybe we just don't understand it and that often results in charges of some sort of "phobe." There's a difference between not understanding and hating. Most of us just want to live our lives and don't really care how others live. I know that's how I live mine. As long as you don't force your views on others and cause them no harm, live as you would like. But even that innocent sentiment often results in getting verbally accosted. The forgotten generation has certainly experienced this. Remember when we were children and couldn't wait to become adults. I wish that someone invented a time machine that would allow us to visit our younger versions and tell them to enjoy the time that you have as a child. Don't wish it to go by quickly because you can never go back. You can never turn back the clock. We are here to stay as we are. We are the in-betweens, the lost generation.
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