Gettin' Old for a Whippersnapper (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Generational Mindset)

This winter has been crazy with youth retreats, some of which were (in retrospect, foolishly) planned on back-to-back weekends (trying to cram them in before Lent started). After nearly killing ourselves with this schedule in January, Breen and I decided we would no longer try to hold our own joint confirmation retreat AND have significant leadership roles in the synod-wide jr. high retreat in the same month - next year we'll still help lead the jr. high retreat for the synod, and just require our confirmands to attend.

Today she called to finalize plans for our spring confirmation retreat this weekend, and then said "I've been thinking. . .what if next year we require the synod-wide retreat instead of our winter retreat, and then, instead of our spring retreat, we schedule a couple days of service - one local, and one down in Baltimore - we could go help Lutheran World Relief or something."

C: "Ok."

B: "Really? Wow, that didn't take much convincing."

C: "Dude, I'm getting too old to sleep on the floor of a church basement."

She busted out laughing, and added "I know what you mean."


Then tonight I was talking to Sarah (who is probably one of the youngest people working in her office), who recently had a co-worker ask for help in interpreting a text message (figuring she must text all the time, and must know what the abbreviation in question meant, since she's so young). Sarah's response?: "I've sent, like, six text messages in my life, and it took me twenty minutes to figure out how to do it."

She went on to say Rob was recently talking with a co-worker who had been watching _My So-Called Life_ with his 12 year old. This is one of Sar's favorite shows, and she and Rob had also been watching the whole series on DVD this winter. Rob asked what they thought of it, and the co-worker said his 12 year old found it really weird because nobody was carrying cell phones, iPods, Nintendo DS's, etc - as in, this 12 year old could not FATHOM how life was lived without these gadgets "way back" in 1994. The co-worker asked what Rob thought of the show, and Rob answered "Well, that show was set in high school when _I_ was in high school, so it didn't seem weird to me. That's what it was like."

It's funny, most of the older generations see us as oh so young, but to this younger generation coming up, we are clearly old, old, old, because we didn't grow up with cell phones and a personal computer and DVD player in every home and high-speed internet and MP3 players and all that. I can still remember touring St. Olaf, and the tour guide talking about how everybody had their own e-mail account and it was kind of a cool new way to communicate with your friends and professors. I remember thinking "That's neat, but I probably won't use it very much."

It sure doesn't seem to me like it's been _that_ long since I've been out of high school and college. But clearly it has been, when the kids who were born in those years cannot imagine how people possibly survived in those "archaic" times.

Alright, I'm logging off before I start telling tales about walking to school in hip-high snow drifts, uphill both ways. :)

Peace,
Catrina

PS - On a related note, the Beloit College Mindset List is worth checking out - gives insight into the general generational worldview of those entering college this past fall.