How old am I? I’m “my Fisher Price little people were made out of wood” years old.
Wrinkles
I’ve been thinking a lot about age lately. Not because it bothers me much. In fact, I consider each year I get to celebrate a blessing. I’ve never forgotten that plenty of my peers did not get that. In fact, I know that I have peers that are forever 15 or 17 years old. When I think of all the life I’ve lived it’s hard not to think of all the life they’ve missed. I think a few crows feet is a small price to pay.
Speaking of crow’s feet, I don’t know what was in Noxema and St Ives, but if people want to know how Gen X is defying standards of aging I’d start by looking there. That was “the beauty routine” for many of us. That and baby oil as sunscreen.
Middle
Still, it recently hit me then in order to still consider myself middle-aged, I would have to live to be approximately 110 years old. We all know I don’t have the kind of fitness regime that makes that real likely. But I’ve also been thinking about how easy it is to take things for granted. As if we’ve all been given a pass that says we are definitely going to get 80, 90, or even 100 years. I’m not just saying this. I consider anyone under 80 to still be vibrant and young and that does not mean I’m giving you 80-year-old kids a pass. We have people out here skydiving in their 90s. Just saying that I’m telling you if you tell me that someone passed at 76 I’m literally gonna gasp, clutch my chest and say so young. And I’m not being ironic. Then I think of my nephew forever frozen at 37 years old. Technically he was middle-aged at 17. It makes me think. Hard. You won’t find me belly aching about body aches.
Being middle-aged Gen X is like being the avocado in a generational sandwich: squeezed between the gluten-free toast of the Millennials and the sourdough artisan bun of the Boomers. We’re just trying to stay ripe, but not too ripe, while quietly wondering why everything hurts when we wake up.
We are the last generation to survive childhood without seatbelts, sunscreen or organic juice boxes. We rode in the way-back of station wagons, drank water straight from the hose and somehow knew how to fold a map. Our parents didn’t “helicopter” us — they maybe occasionally sent up a weather balloon and hoped we didn’t die before dinner. If you came home bleeding, the general response was, “Well, did you learn something?”
Now, decades later, we have become the world’s most exhausted grown-ups. We’re responsible for aging parents, offspring, and increasingly aggressive joints. Our knees sound like bubble wrap, and every sneeze is a gamble.
Middle age for Gen X is a tragicomic blend of nostalgia and lower back pain. Our social media algorithms serve us equal parts 80s music montages and ads for colonoscopies. We’ll spend 20 minutes explaining to our kids how to use a rotary phone, but need them to show us how to turn off the “voice thing” on the TV remote.
We remember when MTV played music and phones had cords. We grew up thinking we were cool because we listened to The Cure and could program a VCR. Now we can’t find our glasses, which are literally on our heads, while Googling “normal symptoms of aging” on phones we can barely read because they keep making the letters smaller all the time.
We are fluent in sarcasm, existential dread, and analog living. We know the pain of a broken cassette tape and the magic of Saturday morning cartoons. We also know what it’s like to sit in a meeting, nodding thoughtfully while internally screaming, “None of this matters! I have 14,000 unread emails and missed lunch.”
Some of us are experiencing a midlife renaissance: taking up hobbies like pickleball, kombucha brewing or purchasing tiny houses we will never actually build. Others of us are simply trying to survive family group chats and workouts without harming innocent bystanders.
But here’s the thing: Gen X may be the ignored middle child of the generational family, but we’re the duct tape holding it all together. Quietly competent, unfussy, and with just enough ironic detachment to endure it all.
So raise a glass of warm hose water, fellow Gen X’ers. We’re still here, still rocking, still a little bitter about how nobody rewinds anymore. And if we fall asleep during your story, don’t take it personally—we were just up late doom-scrolling and Googling “why does my shoulder click when I blink?”
Middle age? We’re crushing it. Slowly. With an ice pack.
