Ok boomer
Catalogue of delights: 11
I have this insecurity about not remembering things. When I talk with people I want to perfectly recall the details of their lives—who did what, where, how they felt about such and such—otherwise it makes me feel like a bad person, like I didn’t try hard enough or care enough to give my full attention. Sometimes this is true, as much as I hate to admit. To care is to put yourself out there, meaning that you’ve got to open up your heart, something I struggle with at times. Old wounds. Other times I simply forget things. Facts and abstractions tend to be more salient than what I ate for lunch because they latch onto the mental models I’ve constructed over the years. Though I still like to believe that I will remember the way you made me feel ten summers ago.
The clerk rings up my book in a slow, unenthused series of motions. His shirt looks like something out of a Gen-Z fashion blog, cheap but chic and trendy. I ask him about it and it takes him awhile to register the question, as if he’d never been asked before. Too much time in cyberspace? Waiting for his response, I start to feel like the annoyingly energetic customer who happens to be in the best of Saturday moods while the underpaid employee is still waiting for the caffeine to clock in. His soul is still waiting for him at the door. “It’s just a meme. Haven’t you seen it?”
I recall my childhood and the patchy scar dotting my lower back, an unavoidable consequence of boyish arrogance, a mini electric pocket bike, and speed bumps. There too are the times I snuck into the nursery behind my neighborhood with my friends to fight each other with borrowed bamboo sticks on giant dirt mounds. More scars than stars ever counted, but we were all the happier for them.
Back in the car I think to myself that kids probably don’t do this anymore. It’s shunned even, all in the name of safety and extracurriculars. And why fiddle with dirt and bamboo sticks when there are smart devices, escapes from suburbia only a swipe away? A fraction of them might actually be doing cool things in the digital ether, but I worry about their willingness and desire to remain in touch with the physical world, that place I love and know and respect, one that has nurtured us for generations. “Ok boomer” is probably the proper response to my grievances, but I know I’m not the only one sounding the sirens.
When I start the engine Keith Johnstone’s Impro comes to mind. Haven’t you seen it? Oh god damnit. Did the kid just put me in my place?
Me and this old guy in the coffee shop aren’t so different. He’s here alone, nursing a coffee with a newspaper he doesn’t seem intent on reading. Not the greatest eyesight, judging by the thickness of his specs. No wedding ring, no agenda for the rest of the day. What differentiates us is that he puts sugar in his coffee while I drink mine black. What does that tell you about our generation?
The shop owner is the subject of his searching gaze, as the old guy is to mine. He’s watching him serve the customers while I continue to sketch my mental caricature. I’m half-reading as to be ready to avert my eyes at the faintest hint of being detected. We like to watch but not be watched. I wonder who is watching me?
And then there’s laughter. It’s feminine, open, whole-hearted. The owner is speaking to two women in a tongue I can’t understand, connecting with them in a way that I never could in my younger years. I’ve never been the funny one, but I do amuse myself often. I can live with amusing. A smile crosses my lips upon realizing that he didn’t try as hard with me to make me laugh. This makes me laugh, and I curse him for his indirect comedy.