Correcting Your Generation While Being Judged Old

My 22-year-old coworker gently explained that side parts are "giving millennial," skinny jeans are over, and the laughing-crying emoji is something only old people use. I am not a millennial. I'm Gen X. I honestly can't decide which part of that is more insulting. How do I handle being called old by a kid who can't even get my generation right?

Misaged By Clueless Youth,
Forgotten in Flannel

Start with the important part. You got called a millennial. Somebody finally noticed us, and they still got the name wrong. That is the most Gen X thing that has ever happened to anybody, and you should have it framed.

We are the forgotten middle child of American history. Boomers got the parades. Millennials got the think pieces. Gen Z gets the trend reports. We got a house key, a box of Pop-Tarts and a note on the fridge that said be home by dark. Nobody marketed to us, nobody studied us, nobody asked what we thought. So of course a twenty-two-year-old can’t tell us apart from people who were born while we were in college. We were never on the map in the first place.

Now, the hair. Here’s what the kid doesn’t know yet: every style they’re laughing at is coming back around, and they’re going to be standing exactly where you’re standing. That middle part they’re so proud of? We wore it in 1995 with a flannel tied around our waist. It went away. It came back. The side part will come back too, right about the time somebody tells that kid their middle part is giving elderly.

And the emoji. Use the laughing-crying emoji. Use it every single time. You’re not trying to look young. You’re a grown adult who laughs at things. That’s what the little guy is for.

Here’s the real lesson, and it’s the only one that matters. We did not care about being cool when we were actually young. Cool was for the people in the commercials. We wore somebody’s dad’s cardigan from Goodwill, boots from the Army surplus store and a look on our faces that said whatever, and we meant every letter of it. The second you start trying to win back a twenty-two-year-old’s approval of your hair, you’ve stopped being Gen X and started being a customer.

So keep the part. Keep the jeans until they fall apart, because that’s the other thing we do. We don’t replace things that still work. Be decent to the kid. They’ll get here. Everybody does.

Trends rotate. Indifference is forever.

– Uncle Bobby