My Generation

  Well, another birthday has come and gone.  As one astute (or wise-ass) 16 year old told me in her card this weekend, “One more year until you’re officially old.”  I really can’t believe it when I stop and think about being 39.  The memories I have written about over the past few weeks seem like only yesterday but in reality are 10, 20, even 30 years ago at this point.  Forty used to seem so decrepit when I was a kid.  I assumed life pretty much ended somewhere in the 30’s and you spent the rest of your years just wandering around the earth telling kids to turn their music down and how much greater times used to be.  The only music I want turned down at this point is country and top 40 but I do think that my generation was the best and experienced the coolest things.

How many kids today can say they rode the rickety wooden roller coaster at the Miracle Strip?  Panama City Beach in general has lost its shine.  Now, spring break is people stripping and blacking out from drinking 24/7.  That’s not necessarily a bad beach trip as an adult but we’re talking about 15, 16, 17 year old kids, sometimes younger.  When we went to the beach, it was about who had the best soundsystem (Jason Lee), walking and driving the strip, going to Miracle Strip, chasing girls (legitimately) and even hitting the usual attractions like go-carts and mini golf.  The closest I got to Spinnaker and LaVela was staying at the Summit one year.  Our room was on the corner and a decent pair of binoculars (Nocks) got us all the wet t shirt action we could handle. I can honestly say that I never had a brush with the law at PCB in the high school days.  Maybe I was a pansy or maybe I was lucky.  Either way, hard to beat those times. 

 Today’s youth have no idea what a good cartoon is!  Transformers, He-Man, actual Looney Toons and GI Joe would wipe the floor with Dora and Calliou.  I’ll give SpongeBob a pass because I still watch it occasionally.  And these shows that Bailey watches are such blatant rip offs of Saved By The Bell and Full House.  They are even bringing Full House back for another run so what does that tell you?  Here’s a gem for you if you can remember what Nickelodeon was like in my day.  You Can’t Do That On Television!  Dude, there would be so many hurt feelings over that show today and the sad part is we are the generation that watched it but would shield our kids from it like the plague!  If you’ve never seen it, please take the time to YouTube it.  It’s really quite bad today but damn it was entertaining back in the day.  Twenty-year olds weren’t even born when Seinfeld and  Friends were in original run.  All night sleepovers were filled with Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies.  Now, they watch their version of the movie and have no idea what it was like in 1989 to watch a camper get slammed against an oak tree while being zipped up in their sleeping bag.  Good times. 

 Music?  I can’t even give this one proper attention in this blog.  I’m still battling people over what music is.  But, in the spirit of the theme, lets cover the basics.  Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Poison, GNR, The Police and even Whitney Houston (who I have little experience with) are far superior to Lady Gaga, JT and Adele.  Aren’t they the hot shots of today?  Metallica was even better in the late 80’s/early 90’s than they are now.  Smashing Pumpkins, Blink 182, Cube, Dre….all 90’s baby!  MTV used to play music videos too instead of this Teen Mom and Guy Code drivel they put on now.  Head bangers Ball and Yo MTV Raps, my heads starting to spin.  And spring break on MTV was almost as good as being there.  The music industry, in my opinion, has seen the greatest drop off of anything in pop culture over time.   

 For crying out loud, even wrestling sucks compared to the good ole days.  I don’t even watch anymore but I can remember actually gathering at friends houses to watch it on a weekly basis.  We all had our favorites.  Some of these guys are still around but I’m talking hay day Stone Cold, Booker T, Hogan, Sting, Bret Hart, The Rock, Undertaker, Lex Luger, The Steiner Brothers.  NWA and WWE were both strong.  Monday Night Raw was a show stopper.  Now I guess people gather up to watch The Voice or The Bachelor.  Holy crap, our society has gone to hell in a hand basket.  

Speaking of athletes, check out the list of athletes I got to watch on TV, or partial list for brevity.  Ken Griffey Jr, John Smoltz, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Nolan Ryan, Bo Jackson, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Ozzie Smith, Barry Larkin, Rickey Henderson, Darryl Strawberry, Tony Gwynn and Frank Thomas were some of the best baseball players to ever watch.  John Elway, Dan Marino, Joe Montana, Troy Aikman, Jim Kelly, Emmitt Smith, Jerry Rice, Thurman Thomas, Andre Reed, Barry Sanders, Deion Sanders and again Bo Jackson headline another sport and likely aren’t rivaled by the same number of players today.  The best athletes in a sport in my generation has to be basketball.  Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic, Dominique, Penny, Shaq, Reggie Miller, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Hakeem The Dream and Clyde The Glide just scratch the surface.  You know something else cool about those days?  With some exceptions later in their career, most of those players played for the same team every year.  I think the 2016 Braves have 3 players that were on the team last year.   

 Of course there are the usuals, like we could play outside without worrying our parents to death, we weren’t consumed with cell phones (I sort of have that problem now) and we didn’t have access to all the trouble of the Internet.  I guess the kids today could try and make a case for their time but it’d be a pretty tough sell.  I try and give Bailey all of the experiences I had growing up to see what it was like.  We watch 80’s/90’s movies, we collect older sports cards, we watch old throwback sporting events and tv shows.  She knows every character on Seinfeld, she knows MJ was better than LBJ, she knows Ken Griffey Jr. was my favorite baseball player, she knows that Bo Jackson was the greatest athlete or our time and she knows that The Smashing Pumpkins are as good as anything she’ll hear on the radio today.  That’s all any of us can really do as we get older, just try and pass on the things that made our lives great to our kids.  Even those that aren’t our kids.  That 16 year old from earlier could’ve fit right in with us 90’s kids and I’ve told her that before.  I think it was the greatest time to be alive.  Maybe it’s just because it’s when I was growing up.  Or maybe it really was an awesome time to be a kid.  Some may see it as being stuck in the past or refusing to “grow up” but I see it as a way of preserving my youth, even if I am only one year away from being officially old.  So I guess I was right as a kid about getting older.  I tell people to turn down Florida Georgia Line and I spend my time talking about how my time was the greatest.  Can you really argue with Kelly Kapowski though? 

 Joey