my mom ALWAYS adds two spaces after each period. every. freaking. time. and, for some reason, it drives me insane. my mom, however, refuses to give up her extra space. she claims that “one space just doesn’t look right.” & this got me thinking. what other ‘gaps’ exist between the generations?
the most obvious one is the ever present iphone (our generation’s namesake). our parents had to ink their quill pens and summon their carrier pigeon in order to get a message to a friend. relationships moved a little slower and the content from a stranger was a little less personal. i mean, nudes were impossible to transmit through a land line.
while differences clearly exist, the gap between the generations doesn’t seem to be as wide as we may think. i mean, the fashion was similar (mom jeans, birkenstocks, and tube tops have made a come back and chucks & docs have never gone out of style). drugs and alcohol were on teens’ minds, even though the choice of drug may have differed. the music was a little tamer and the sex less open, but they were still very much a focus.
just like us, older generations have done things they regret, used the same, stupid social categories (think breakfast club), and had the same ultimate goal, to live free or die. i think that perceiving a greater gap has kept us from really understanding one another. but we’re all basically the same. as odd as it is to imagine, it’s likely that our parents were screaming the words to bohemian rhapsody, overanalyzing mixed signals, and trying to find fake ids. we’re not so different. and it would be groovy, rad, lit af for us to acknowledge this and come together so that we can really talk about the things that matter. we might even be able to teach each other a thing or two.
