The Cockroach Generation

GenX is the cockroach of all the generations since WWII.

Everyone endlessly praises the GIs who are now all dead.

No one realizes that the generation that followed them is called the Silents. This generation experienced Elvis Presley in the 50’s and focked to see him in Las Vegas in the 70’s. They also ran Washington D.C. all through the 70’s and 80’s. A simple definition of them: “inefficient bureaucratic red tape”.

The GIs gave birth to the Boomers. The Boomers still think of themselves as “the Generation” (I'll talk more about this generation in later blogs).

Finally Silents and Boomers produced us, GenX.

I was born very early on in the GenX phenomenon (born ’64). I grew up on Maxwell Smart, The Brady Bunch, and Gilligan’s Island. I saw “Saturday Night Fever” in the theater, bought the soundtrack, and watched Saturday Night Live religiously on every week. I was there at the beginning of cable TV: HBO and MTV. I knew Nixon, Ford, and Carter were a joke. Reagan and Oliver North seemed as real as personalities as George of the Jungle and his elephant.

What best describes the GenX experience is absurdity. No child was ever meant to live and survive in a society as the 60’s, the 70’s, and the 80’s. For all of us who have survived, I am claiming the cockroach as our mascot. GenX is the cockroach generation.

Here is something on cockroaches I found on Wikipedia:

The cockroach is also one of the hardiest insects on the planet, capable of living for a month without food and remaining alive headless for up to a week. It can also hold its breath for 45 minutes and has the ability to slow down its heart rate.

It is popularly suggested that cockroaches will "inherit the earth" after humanity destroys itself in a nuclear war. Cockroaches do indeed have a much higher radiation resistance than vertebrates, with the lethal dose perhaps 6 to 15 times that for humans. However, they are not exceptionally radiation-resistant compared to other insects, such as the fruit fly ^[1].

Long live the cockroach! Long live GenX!