This Might Not Be Coherent (Thank You, H1N1 :-P)

If I ever have children, they will one day no doubt ask me what life was like when I was "young." They will have read in their history books of all the "craziness" that transpired in my lifetime, and just looking back right now I already realize I'll have some good fodder for stories. In fact, I can ask myself the very same questions I have posed to my parents over the years and already come up with a few answers.

Why, I remember when my mother told me about how she had to iron her hair because it was so curly and they didn't really have actual hair flat irons. She was in high school in the 70s, and the whole "big hair thing" didn't come into play until she attended cosmetology school (well, back then I guess it was just "beauty school"). So what is the strangest thing I've done to my hair to stay in fashion? I can tell you the things I did to it that were most definitely out of fashion, like when I managed to accidentally crimp my hair before a big middle school dance with these weird hair doodads I bought for myself at Caldors (or was it Bradlees?). While I am most definitely a child of the 80s that had many a crimped-do, this occurred in probably about 1992 or 1993 so you can imagine my horror. I remember I hid the pictures from my mother for years, because I was too embarrassed to show her (even though she obviously saw me when I left the house). However, I suppose the only culturally significant 'do I've had is the "Rachel," made famous by Jennifer Aniston when she played said character on "Friends." I got it right before news broke that it was the "it" hairdo, and immediately felt funny for having it. In fact, I've worn my hair in a lot of styles based on media characters, even if they were cartoon characters (my favorite go-to has always been the "Quistis," especially with my glasses), but that is probably best left for a post by itself (with lots of pictures to match).

Let's see, what else... Oh, there is of course the question of "Where were you when..." followed by a significant moment in history. For my mom, that was "Where were you when JFK was assassinated?" Meanwhile my father, who moved from the Mediterranean to Canada to the US, has stories about where he was when the Nazis attacked his village ("We were all laughing at them at the edge of the cliff. They couldn't reach us from where they were shooting from!") and, before that, when the Italian soldiers invaded ("Your grandmother attacked them with a frying pan, she wasn't about to give them food when she had a family to raise!") Again, whole other post. When I was growing up though, I used to think my generation was severely lacking in a "generation defining occurrence." The biggest thing that I can actually remember from when I was a kid was the Challenger disaster. Then it was Desert Storm. But then, it was 9/11.

What has been made clear is that probably every generation, at first, starts to think the one before it was crazier, or harder, or easier, or amazing, or horrifying. Then something happens and you can't wait for it to end, for all the talk to stop, for all the questions to cease. From the minor little dips into pop culture history to the realities of war, each generation gets those "defining moments" in some way or the other, and is thus labeled as such for the rest of history (until something more exciting happens). Then, you can look back and laugh at it when it doesn't hurt anymore.

This is why I think this point in my life shall be "hilarious" someday. It might take quite a while, but we'll see. When my theoretical kids ask me about the economic crisis, I can tell them I lived it. Our very own depression, oh great. Then there's the health insurance issues, other medical issues, the current and former political state, the fact that my boyfriend and I both managed to get H1N1 (aka "swine flu") and are now both basically quarantined for a week, the hardships of being in a state with some of the highest gas prices in the continental US... It should be funny someday that it all happened to us at once, right? ... Right?