I never really thought about
generation gaps when I was younger. I knew that there were people older than
me, who had different experiences, but it didn't seem to matter. I guess this
was because at school, university and when I started working the people I most
associated with were of a similar age to me. Many of the people who joined the
company I work for at the same time as me moved on but I stayed (what can I
say, I am a creature of habit) and the faces in the office started to look
younger and younger. Then someone from my place of work told me that they were
born in 1990 and (after picking my jaw up from the floor) I started wondering
if this bothered me.
The more I thought about it the
more I realised that there were people who didn't have the same cultural
touchstones as me: growing-up with the teen movies of John Hughes, the fall of
the Berlin Wall, 'Danger Mouse'. Furthermore I would make a reference from the
80s or early 90s and, due to being faced with a blank expression, after
explaining said reference the response would be along the lines of "Yeah,
I wasn't born then."
I should have taken the hint that
a reference to Ollie North and the 'Iran-Contra Hearings' was perhaps a little
too specific.
This isn't to say that I can't have
conversations with Millennials: as a self-diagnosed 'pop culture junkie' I like
to think I have my finger on the pulse (although I have only just learnt that Iggy
Azalea isn't a new species of plant), but our cultural touchstones are
different and this affects the way we see things. I thought this might mean I
couldn't be good friends with someone of a different generation.
However I am now seeing someone who was
not only born in the mid-80s but grew-up in South Africa, so her touchstones
are even more out of whack with my own, but so far this doesn't seem to matter.
Oh and we watched 'Some Kind Of Wonderful' recently and she really enjoyed it.