When I was your age…

I invite you to think up all of the teenage stereotypes.

- (always the first one) reckless

- rude to elders

- careless

- dirty (picture the quintessential trashed room, floor littered with dirty clothing)

- vapid

- whiny

- spoiled

- dramatic

I’m really curious, have these stereotypes existed for every generation? Did my grandparents tell my mom,’Get a job, clean up your room, and get ready for a kick in the pants when you get to college’?

Why does it seem as if all the Baby Boomers were these incredibly hard-working, dedicated, ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ kind of people? And the generation before them, that evidently walked seven miles to and from school in the snow. All of them did–it’s fact.

From a cynic’s perspective, I think each generation gets a little liberty to rewrite history. The Baby Boomers could have been the rudest, dirtiest, most reckless bunch of teens the world has ever known, and we would never know about it because we weren’t there. So my mother can tell me that she ‘worked at the toll booth on Christmas morning’ so that she could have some money, and my dad can tell me that he ‘ate Ramen Noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner for four years straight’ and I don’t really have a choice but to believe it.

I’ve never heard any stories about my parents’ childhoods other than tales that highlight how hardworking, how dedicated, how brilliant they are. And I love my parents and all, but seriously, there’s some major editing going on.

Although we many of us don’t walk 7 miles to and from school, at least we can join this Facebook group: ‘When I was your age I had to walk 7 miles to school….UP HILL.’ I especially like that uphill is spelled incorrectly. There are only 17 members, but hey.