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The times I grew up seemed magical beyond subsequent comparison.

But, then, it's hard to say whether it was the times, or my being a child/teen with a mind too ignorant to know any better, to be aware of underlying social rot/duplicity, etc.

I will say I get miffed from time to time for being roped in with "boomers". My year of birth "makes the cut" per whatever the arbitrary cutoff point was last time I checked (I want to say it was 1964...?).

But I'll never forget awakening the day after I got my driver's license (latter 1970's) to learn gasoline prices had DOUBLED overnight, and I was hardly nonchalant about it for being in anything but some buoyant income stream.

I'll also never forget the company I joined out of college announcing they were changing their pension situation such that had I been there a year sooner, I'd have gotten the full/legacy pension/benefits, but instead wound up with a "cash out" (into a 401k-ish situation), with no medical/dental benefits.

There've been similar things I'm not remembering specifically in this moment. I'm mostly remembering a sense of having "just missed out" on a stereotypically amazing boomer life.

A few years back I got a bit tipsy, and rather laid into my wife's older sister and her husband, who are five or six years older than us, ranting a la "What's it like to be a REAL boomer - as opposed to being one essentially by arbitrary definition alone without the goods/benefits to show for it?"

They just smiled. They knew. They're easily five to ten times better off than us. I wouldn't be surprised if it were twenty.

So... I can't complain because I know I had it far easier/better than younger moderns. But to perpetually read about how bad I should feel about it (I'm NOT saying that's what I found in your yet again thoughtful, enjoyable read), well... "it ain't me... it ain't me... I ain't no senator's son, no...."

But setting down the economic aspect for the balance of this post:

I adored much of 1990's music. To me it seemed like new and improved 1970's music.

I also rather enjoy a lot of modern hip hop, probably because I'm fine with what I'll call "repetition with interesting/clever twists".

But the late 60's / early 70's were my child- and teen- hood, so the pop hits of those times feel as though they were a sort of "fundamental basis of reality". They're mostly what my wife and I perform out, which often feels like time-travel.

I'm full of... theories when pondering comparisons between then and now... but, again (but said differently), to me having been there and been much younger at the time constitutes some serious potting soil for bias.

All that (probably rather poorly) said, I must insist

Brandy

is the finest non-Beatles pop song of all time. :-)

(assuming the listener can get past what these days are likely considered somewhere between latent and obscene sexism, of course... ;-) )

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~milf_god wrote (thread):

Thanks for giving your insight ~inquiry!

I think I can say I definitely know how you feel when it comes to being born at the very beginning of a new generation and just missing another (seemingly better off) one. I just missed being a millenial by literally 6 months, and the day I learned I was considered "Gen Z" I was MORTIFIED. Like...please do not group me with those crazy kids...they do not even know what a VHS is, let alone how to work one. I'm not saying Millenials are all that, but I'd much rather be that than Gen Z anyday.

I too also wonder if childhood nostalgia has a role to play in the way were perceive different time periods due to our blissful ignorance as children. Like, there are times now when I sometimes wish it was the 2000s again (also due to the fact that 2000s nostalgia has also been on the rise these days), and reminisce about the days when things were simpler...but that's the thing. I think it was because those days, for me, were simpler, not because I necessarily miss the 2000s!

Either way, it was pretty interesting to hear just how strict the cutoff was for boomers and Gen X was back in the day when it came from reaping the very best rewards and privileges that society had to offer.

~tatterdemalion wrote (thread):

I'm mostly remembering a sense of having "just missed out" on a stereotypically amazing boomer life.

I think that's the defining experience of early GenX. Arbitrary GenX cutoff dates are 1965--1980, but it's entirely possible for someone to have been born a bit before that and have the early GenX experience, or a bit later than 1980 and have the late GenX experience.