Recently divorced parents are remarkably generous when it comes time to dole out the yearly birthday, Christmas, and "fun money" gifts.
I'm still young. The old man looks at me, feels guilty, hands out the cash. The fact that my mother hangs out with rich guys doesn't hurt either.
Everybody placates the kid. These days especially.
Didion Sprague's Take on Gen X
on
Generation Wrecked
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· Score: 3, Interesting
My sister -- Sister Reba -- might be considered Generation X.
She doesn't have a dime saved. Everything she spends comes from Riley the boyfriend (a Gen-X'r who dropped out several liberal arts colleges, got a short story published when he was hosteling around Europe, and now has such a severe case of Writer's Block (a fear that he can't reproduce his single success) that he and Sister Reba spend all their money just 'trying to have fun.'
I think they live in a perpetual state of 'recapturing their youth.'
It's sad. I've saved nearly everything, and not long ago loaned Sister Reba a thousand bucks to pay off the last of her college debts. But her credit rating is ruined.
Yet the two of them -- Sister Reba and Riley -- continually talk about the 1970's like they were the best thing in the world. Riley tells me about the movies that changed his life -- Saturday Night Fever, Apocalypse Now, the Deer Hunter -- and swears that at even at age 33 he's still got a good novel inside of him -- somewhere.
Not long ago Riley was reading Jonathon Franzen's _Corrections_ and was so enraged that Franzen had written *his* novel, that he pitched it at one of the plate glass windows in their townhouse. The window shattered, the super won't foot the bill, and now their even deeper in debt.
Me, I know what's what. Or at least I think I do.
If those wacko islamicists are targetting the economy like they say they are, then I know what I have to do. I have to save, save, save. I have to prepare for the day when the power goes out for good and there's no more water coming out of the tap.
It scares me, and I'm only 16.
But Sister Reba and Riley? Fuck it. They could care less. They work at their dumb jobs all days just to pay off their credit cards.
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Recently divorced parents are remarkably generous when it comes time to dole out the yearly birthday, Christmas, and "fun money" gifts.
I'm still young. The old man looks at me, feels guilty, hands out the cash. The fact that my mother hangs out with rich guys doesn't hurt either.
Everybody placates the kid. These days especially.
My sister -- Sister Reba -- might be considered Generation X.
She doesn't have a dime saved. Everything she spends comes from Riley the boyfriend (a Gen-X'r who dropped out several liberal arts colleges, got a short story published when he was hosteling around Europe, and now has such a severe case of Writer's Block (a fear that he can't reproduce his single success) that he and Sister Reba spend all their money just 'trying to have fun.'
I think they live in a perpetual state of 'recapturing their youth.'
It's sad. I've saved nearly everything, and not long ago loaned Sister Reba a thousand bucks to pay off the last of her college debts. But her credit rating is ruined.
Yet the two of them -- Sister Reba and Riley -- continually talk about the 1970's like they were the best thing in the world. Riley tells me about the movies that changed his life -- Saturday Night Fever, Apocalypse Now, the Deer Hunter -- and swears that at even at age 33 he's still got a good novel inside of him -- somewhere.
Not long ago Riley was reading Jonathon Franzen's _Corrections_ and was so enraged that Franzen had written *his* novel, that he pitched it at one of the plate glass windows in their townhouse. The window shattered, the super won't foot the bill, and now their even deeper in debt.
Me, I know what's what. Or at least I think I do.
If those wacko islamicists are targetting the economy like they say they are, then I know what I have to do. I have to save, save, save. I have to prepare for the day when the power goes out for good and there's no more water coming out of the tap.
It scares me, and I'm only 16.
But Sister Reba and Riley? Fuck it. They could care less. They work at their dumb jobs all days just to pay off their credit cards.