Generation Extra-Wide Gap

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.