Complications between the generations

I never notice generational differences more than when I visit my great aunt’s house over the holidays. At various points throughout the day, there are sometimes five “generations” sitting around the dining room table talking for hours at a time.

The youngest kids don’t last long before they’re off to the den to watch television or play their Nintendo DS. They’re post-Gen Y, born in the late 90s and early 2000s, and not yet old enough to own cell phones or laptops. But they have Youtube accounts that are supervised by their parents.

My cousins, my brother, my boyfriend and I are clearly millennials. My cousin listens to music on his iPod or stand-up comedy on Youtube while he works at his first office job post-graduation. His sister has a modified work day (she works 10-6) and she loves her job because everyone in her office is young and fun. We all have our cell phones ready in our pockets, and we occassionally send and receive texts.

My great aunt’s children, who are my mom’s cousins in their 30s and early 40s, a few of whom still live at home, come and go. They visit with family and friends, they watch hockey in the basement, they hang out with their nephews in the den. They fit in somewhere between the Baby Boomers and Generation X. Except for the youngest of them, they use technology but don’t really trust it enough to, say, have a Facebook profile. I actually have to talk to them at length to know what they’re up to, and vice versa.

My dad, my aunt and uncle are clearly Baby Boomers. They have Blackberrys, but either only for work or because they like to send and receive a lot of personal e-mails. Although my aunt is a Facebook stalker, she’s the exception. I’m not even sure my dad knows what Facebook, blogs, social networks and instant messaging are.

Then there’s my great aunt and her friends. They’re considered seniors, but they’re still young enough to be very involved in family, have part-time jobs to keep themselves busy, and drink everyone else under the table. But they have no idea how technology works or what the point of using it is. Most annoying to me is that they’ve never really been exposed to alternative point of views, so they are stuck in their ways.

And to this last group, although they know I’m smart and educated, I’m a socialist who has been brainwashed by the ultra-liberal unionized public school teachers.

I have been called red, pink, socialist, communist. There is no greater sin to an old conservative Liberal-voting Catholic than a family member who votes NDP (communists, to them) and thinks taxes are okay, that the war on terror breeds more terrorists, and it’s okay for same-sex couples to not only get married, but live their lives “out” in the open.

They also think I’m much younger than I am. As I drank a glass of wine, one asked me if I was old enough to drink it. “How old are you now? 17?” he asked. I’m 22, I said. He laughed as if it were no different.

If this much misunderstanding can take place within the generations of a family, it’s no wonder the Baby Boomers have trouble understanding us. I love listening to my elders tell stories about their lives, I just wish they were as willing to listen to mine.