In Memoriam

I spring from a weird generation. They call us Gen X. We don't quite fit a mold, and yet, as times inexorably moves along, we are now being primed to take over for our predecessors. We are about to be handed the keys to the car...and our folks are more than a little nervous.

What about Gen X'ers defines us? Where do we largely fall politically? How does our education, socioeconomic stratification and collective "world view" make us ready to get our learner's permit to test drive the planet?

When Roger Daltrey song "My Generation", he was talking about the color-bursting, edge-pressing side of his generation...The Me Generation. The Baby Boomers. The Hippies that turned Yuppies that turned Reagan Republicans that turned into what they are now...very possibly the last recipients for Social Security. They are my parents, and a generation that had it tougher than I did, but not nearly as tough as the one that preceded them. That is, of course, the way it always works. But the Boomers had really big shoes to fill. Impossible, you might say, and perhaps that's why they never felt comfortable in their own skin. For all the growth and wealth and achievement the Boomer's felt, something was always missing.

I was born in the twilight of the Vietnam conflict. My Father served in the military. My uncle served in Vietnam. My maternal and paternal Grandfathers fought in World War II. I pay my deepest thanks and respect to those men and women who have given me the freedom to own a piece of the Internet where I can write nearly anything I choose without fear.

Gen X'ers always have had war, or conflict. So, in a way, did the Boomers. They were largely conceived in the shadows of Armistice Day, but were ushered into their teens in the backdrop of Korea, and bore the brunt of the horrors Vietnam produced. But when I say that my generation has always had conflict, I don't mean we had more wars or skirmishes in our youth to deal with than our parents and grandparents did...I mean that we saw it each and every day with our own eyes. And got kind of sadly used to it.

It strikes me that the two generations of Americans that fought hardest to preserve our freedoms and maintain peace for their own children were the same bright minds that invented all the channels by which war and starvation, slavery and brutality are now shown to us via television, movies and the Internet all 24 hours of any given day. Perhaps it was meant to be, that for future kids to understand the freedoms they take for granted, the spoken or written word was never enough. Filmmakers had to generate hours of footage, re-create those images into the scores of movies, documentaries television mini-series, books and video games that remind the viewer of what happened.

Now, with the Internet, you can watch war any time you like. You can see murder and brutality any time you like. You can witness oppression whenever the mood strikes you. I'm numb. We're numb. My Father had to be told what it was like by his own Father and their friends.

We have Afghanistan. Iraq parts I and II. Homeland terrorism, and hot spots around the globe that flare up all the time. There are certain to be places we are fighting that you and I aren't even supposed to know about. We have the threat of Kim Jong Il. We have the insanity spewing from Ahmadinejad. We have little Hitlers challenging us to an arm wrestling match every morning for breakfast. We're numb. We don't get it.

We don't know how scary it must have felt to get on a ship, and have no idea where in the world we were headed. To never have heard the words Guadalcanal or Okinawa or Hiroshima. The world was massive back when my Grandfathers were handed the keys. It was HUGE.

Now, my kids can watch a border skirmish in Dar fur on a web cam. They can see troops patrolling the dunes in Kabul with a mouse click. Totally numb.

The Boomers are handing us their own modified, souped up version of the keys to the world. It's a lot smaller now, and fits in your hand. It's easy to start, self-navigating and can parallel park itself. So you wouldn't think we'd be able to screw it up...but we might. If we don't hold on to some of the basics and remember from where we came, we might. Happy Memorial Day. Do yourself a favor and call or seek out a vet from WWII today and listen in for a while. I'm lucky enough to be able to call my Grandpa, and I plan to.