Generation WHAT?

While researching something about what it takes to make a marriage succeed (Tom and I went to a bridal party last night), I ran across a comment from a woman who described herself as follows: "I am older, middle-aged, part of Generation X."

Wait a minute? I thought Generation Xers would think of themselves as young. I know I am a Baby Boomer, and that there are cohorts called Generation Y (also the Millennials) and Generation Z (also iGeneration, Net Generation, Internet Generation), but ...

So like the good librarian I used to be, I looked it up -- to discover that Generation X refers to those born from 1960 to 1980. So there are Generation Xers, like the woman I mentioned, who consider themselves middle-aged  ("older"). If you were born in 1960, you would be (barely) a Generation Xer and be in your early 50s.

The dates for Gen Y are amorphous -- later '70s to early years of this millennium. Gen Z are those born from sometime in the 1990's to ?

If you read about this, always bearing in mind that descriptions of a large group of people may apply to the whole but not necessarily to specific individuals within the group, you will note that not only are there clear and important differences between even adjacent cohorts, the time period describing each cohort seems to begetting shorter. Gen Z and Gen Y overlap. Even the people who routinely use these categories have not agreed on a dividing line/year.

A so-called biblical generation was 40 years. Yes, that is what all those stories about 40 years mean in the Bible. It was not that the earth had circled the sun forty times but that a generation had lived and died. What about forty days [and forty nights]? Basically it meant a long time. When I grew up down south, you often heard "a month of Sundays", as in , "I haven't seen you in a month of Sundays." Literally that would mean 30/31 weeks. Actually it just means a relatively long time. It is no more specific than "It's been a while."

As the pace of technological and social change speeds up, we have the anomaly of a generation (Baby Boomers) living longer, up to twice as long as the biblical standard of forty years.And we live into not only the next generation but into the following and maybe even a bit into yet another.

Remember when you wrote letters, stamped and mailed them? Except for the glut of junk and political mail (just a category of junk, IMHO), how many times a year do you get that kind of mail now? When did you realize that your grandchildren don't bother to check their mailboxes regularly? I often email my sister-in-law to text her daughter to check the mail for something I have sent for my great-niece. Four generations: I mail, my helpful sister-in-law (younger than I am) texts her daughter. Who knows how my niece and her daughter will communicate ten years from now.
Remember when you first sent something by Fax? When was the last time you did that? When I worked at the library, people came in to use our fax machine. We were one of two places in town with a fax machine for public use. And we could only send, not receive. Why weren't these people scanning documents and emailing?
Remember when you got your first email? To keep up with your grandkids? To see pictures of same?
Remember when you discovered your grandkids no longer bother with email and you had to get on Facebook or Twitter?
When did you start asking your son or daughter to take the pictures off of Facebook and email them to you?
When did you give up on ever seeing all those photos that lived only on cellphones?
When did you realize your grandkids think that Facebook is for old folks?
When did you make the decision to text or not to text?
Do you still have a land line (telephone) even though you care never more than one foot away from your cell phone?
Do you surf the web on your smartphone? I have had people ask me to show them how to do things on their computer, things they already do all the time on their smartphone. Why are they even bothering with the computer? I usually find out, after I have given them computer lessons, that they just went back to the phone anyway.

Me? I'm just at old coot enjoying early retirement.
Who made the decision not to txt.

How long will I be able to hold out?

PS -- I have been blogging since 2004 or so. Blogging has come and gone, too, it seems. Most of my friends who blogged (including quite a few that I met through our blogs) seldom post anything anymore. Judging from the stats that Blogger keeps, there are eight or nine people out there who occasionally read this blog.   Hey, how ya doin'? It's been a month of Sundays since you were here last.