Who Are You? What is Gen X Watch?

Can a moment in a car with a friend shape your sense of self? What does this have to do with defining Gen X Watch? What is GenX watch and what can it be and how can you help define it?

In 1987 I was driving a friend home from an Alateen meeting. Alateen was a 12 step group for teens who had family members that are addicts. I would love to tell you that it helped. What it did was help me become a better codependent and prepare me to be a functioning addict later in life. Some of the people I was in there with had the same experience I did.

The person I was driving home lived near me, but we both went to meetings two towns over. There were meetings in our town but the first time I went to the local one was the first time, Jackie, the person I was driving home, did as well. Her ex boyfriend was in the meeting. He was abusive to her and was one of my bullies. After that first meeting he said horrible things to her in the parking lot and left her a crying mass of human flesh. As his Camaro drove off into the night I awkwardly offered comfort and we ended up going to the one two towns over together. In the sprit of Alateen we kept all of this anonymous.

We were in different cliques. She was a popular girl and my crew was…different. But we were bound in a secret friendship of being in a group that spoke of our trauma with an addict for a parent. On the drive home we would have conversations about life, the universe, and everything. We were talking about something innocuous and London Calling came on the radio.

As the Clash played in my ’77 Monte Carlo she cranked up my radio and jammed to the music. I was lost in the moment of seeing her lost in the music. I envied her lust for life sometimes. As the song ended I told her I never would have expected someone like her to like, or even know, The Clash. She replied, “I’m more than what they think. I know who I am. Who the hell is Pat Green?” I did not have an answer. There was silence. After a few moments she simply added, “That’s what I thought.” I felt gut punch and gave the only answer I could at 17. “I’m trying Jackie. But I’m lost.” Without missing a beat, she replied. “You’re right here. Whoever you are now, just be that and make sure you know who you are and aren’t.”

As I dropped her off at her house she rifled through her bookbag and pulled some polaroids out looking furiously for one. She handed it to me. It was me. I was wearing my bomber jacket and shades with a shy smile on my face. “He’s right here, Pat. He’s a good guy. Get to know him.”

I lost touch with her after high school. I saw her once at a party about a year after we graduated. A few years after that she was my waitress at a diner in a small town. I never knew what prompted this conversation and I never told her how much it impacted me. In the moment I was hurt and scared, but also felt seen. As I raised my child and still come to grips with who I am in middle age, I come back to that moment a lot. It has helped me ensure my adult child grew to have a sense of self and helped me realize that finding yourself is not always a deep quest, but right in front of you. But you need to accept that and define it. Who am I? Who are you? What defines you?

I find comfort in nostalgia and am drawn to retro stuff. Most of the GenX related content out there makes me uncomfortable. It makes me feel that some of them need to be forced to sit down and rewatch ‘The Breakfast Club’ and have an intervention.

Content that speaks about how star spangled awesome we were while throwing the younger generations under the bus ignores so much of our music and movies that defined us. We knew our plight and a major part of our angst was driven by our parents’ and grandparents’ generations collectively shitting on us and dismissing us. Many of us were latchkey feral children left to our own devices. Ignored.

When we were noticed, childhood trauma that would haunt many of us into adulthood came with being noticed. To create content where we smugly shit on the generation of our children is totally missing the point and lame. This isn’t a place where we confuse nostalgia and celebration of what never was to harm the next generation.

The past helped create the now and that path continues into the future. This is not just about Memphis patterns and MTV and Saturday Morning Cartoons. It is a part of it, but it is a vehicle that I will speak about shortly.

GenX Watch is an experiment that I hope will connect GenX and GenZ using nostalgia as the vehicle to have important discussions about now and the road ahead. Nostalgia for those who lived in a time and a place and retro love of an era is a fascinating intersect.

When I was a teen in the 80’s I was fascinated by the 1950’s. The music and the television and a dash of ‘Back to the Future’ inspired an interest. In that interest I discovered beatnik poetry that would advance not just pop culture, but society and how we see the world. And in that interest there was a shared moment that could have connected two tribes, but didn’t. There was a missed opportunity when I was young and my parents were alive to talk about ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ and compare that to some poignant Brat Pack movies. Could that have created moments where we could have learned from each other? Understood each other? Found a better future seeped in common ground?

Gen X Watch is using the lessons of the past and pop culture as a vehicle to make a better tomorrow. And hopefully we will have fun doing this.

Nostalgia is comfort. But it also has the danger of being idealized and becomes a mask for who we really are and what we really experienced. The music and the movies and the clothes were sometimes our escape from what was happening in life. Some of us cranked up the music when our parents were yelling in the next room. Seeing a movie had you forget about pain for awhile. The same is true of getting lost in a book. The clothes were a means of expressions and celebration of self. You were told to act like an adult, but the biggest decision you were empowered to make was what outfit you were wearing. So you wore it and you rocked it! Just the other day I learned one of my prom dates went full ‘Pretty in Pink’ on her prom dress! She made her prom dress out of a bridesmaid’s gown! She chopped it up, added more satin and tulle, and even got shoes dyed to match and complete the ensemble! That is expression and celebration of self and amazing.

But the darker side is we can sometimes think our escapes were the reality. The good old days weren’t always good and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems. Being a cold war latch key kid had some dark moments.

I love the music I blasted in my walkman to silence the background noise. But I cannot forget or dismiss the noise I was driving out and if I see my kid drowning out some noise, I need to not focus on the airpods and the phone, but on their heart. Our kids are doing the same thing we were, the medium has changed.

The blog will be the regular space you can read the stories of life that shaped now. But I do not want it to be just my stories, I want your stories in there too. I hope you will reach out to me with the contact information in the site, our facebook page, or the insta. I would love to have guest columnists or permission to share your stories and polaroids in the book bag of your heart.

There will be a magazine! Starting in February of 2024 there will be a 20 page magazine in PDF and print versions. It will embrace the nostalgia of 80’s teen magazines with a twist of now. Every magazine will have a cover pop culture icon. Their story will focus on how they have helped shape a better now and invite us all to make a difference. Another key element will be then and now. Poignant thoughts of things we did then that we now know better. And in the now how we can help clean up the mess we made with the generation enduring the impact of then…now. There will also be fun product reviews of things you can still buy today like Swatch Watches, and music and movie reviews of moments of pop culture we may want to revisit, rediscover, and talk about. Finally, there will be Yearbook splash pages featuring your images and the Buzz of your thoughts and insights.

‘Members Only’ Patreon Page. Patreons will get free PDF copies of the magazine, discounts on upcoming merch and print mags, backstage content, and other perks. Yes, it funds me and my team, but I want you to get value for this, value that enriches you and moves you.

GenX/GenZ Vids. In a few months my adult child, who looks almost exactly like me, and I will be putting together short videos to showcase on TikTok and Reels and other spaces. They will be funny and feature a GenX middle aged Steve Harrington like guy and his kid and their misadventures of being a little lost and found in love. They will be funny and also have a point.

You! We need you to not only enjoy the content, but be a part of it. This is not here for the likes and the comments. It is here for the engagement. It is here for us to learn from each other and move one another. Join the Patreon. Share this with your friends. Share with us your stories. In the stories about then in the now, we will make a better tomorrow. The next 3 entries are based on discussions in our social media. Gen X Watch is just beginning and we get to shape it together.

_{Banner Photo Credit: Cyril Caton (Some Rights Reserved)}