THESE Generation Xers are getting a bad rub. They're accused of being clueless slackers adrift in a world they can't understand with no moral or ethical compass. Old cliché are now
pearls of wisdomThey have no specific talents, other than being able to walk around with their pants halfway down their butts. All their music sounds alike, which is to say bad. They try so hard to be eccentric with their weird hair and trashy clothes, not realizing that they lack the one key element of eccentricity: money. You have to be rich to be eccentric, otherwise you're just a crazy person who dresses funny.
I think all these characterizations are mean-spirited. They take advantage of a group of people without the verbal skills to mount a counter-attack that consists of more than the phrase: "Bite me."
I like Generation Xers because I've suddenly become a freakin' genius. Since their exposure to literature is limited to Internet chat room dialogue, my mediocre state-college background suddenly renders me an intellectual giant.
Why, just the other day, I was ordering a Coke from a Generation Xer and she said they only had Pepsi. I said, "Well, any port in a storm."
She looked at me as if I had just walked on water.
"Wow, that's deep," she said.
I was stunned. She thought I made up one of the oldest clichés in the world. And I thought, hey, if she's impressed with that, what else can I get away with?
"Still waters run deep," I said.
Suddenly, I knew how Gandhi must have felt.
I discovered just about any old cliché would amaze members of this generation. But snatches of old songs, the kind that never actually made it to CD, could pass just as well.
To a kid who was having relationship problems I said, "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with." It was as if a pearl of truth had fallen out of my mouth. I thought he was going to kiss my ring.
Jokes are another vast resource to use in front of the "My McDonald's" generation. Jokes that were on life support when Bob Hope first stole them are suddenly blinding flashes of brilliance when told to this new audience.
I tried: A guy goes into a bar with a duck on his head. The bartender says, "Can I help you?" The duck says, "Yeah, get this guy off my butt."
"You gotta send that one to Seinfeld," I was advised. "It's a killer."
Just about any bar joke is considered fresh nowadays. Vast rafts of them have been sent floating on the Internet, without any hint as to their lengthy, not to mention, moldy, pedigree.
Like, "A three-legged dog walks into an old Western bar and says, "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw."
Killer, brah.
Or how about: A termite walks into a bar and asks, "Where's the bar tender?"
These are the kind of jokes that have begun to be posted again on bulletin boards by people who don't realize they were first uttered by folks with excessive body hair living in Oldavai Gorge.
But that's OK. Because, I've always thought I was lazy, ill-read and culturally challenged. Now, when I see the look of admiration when I tell a couple of kids with more body piercings than a voodoo doll: "You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need." I feel like James Joyce.
Angry social commentator P.J. O'Rourke likes to tell Generation Xers to "pull up your pants, turn your hat around and get a job."
I like to teach them history by saying: "Come and listen to my story 'bout a man named Jed, a poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed . . . "