I was browsing the internet recently the way someone might browse their fridge and cupboards. Just casually looking at various social media sites for some tidbit or morsel of content to tide me over for a while.
Eventually, having wound my way through various and sundry web-based back alleys, I stumbled into a fun conversation started by a Gen Z type. These are folk somewhere between 14-27 years old.
Essentially the conversation started with the question: “I’ve heard stories about how Gen X people essentially woke up, got dressed, left the house, and were gone all day on weekends and most of the night on weekdays.”
The response was quick and affirming by loads of Gen X people who were clearly excited by getting any attention at all as they were typically ignored as youth and Boomers shouted back and forth over them.
As a person solidly in the Gen X category I can say without equivocation that yes, this was true.
On any given weekend and summer day I would be up early, maybe grab a bowl of cereal, and then jump on my bike, vanishing for the day’s adventures. If Mum was awake, I might tell her what I was up to, which would typically amount to me saying:
“Going bike riding for the day, bye.”
To which she would respond:
“Ok, have a good time, try to be home for dinner.”
Most often I would not be home for dinner. I would be on my bike exploring every square inch of Guelph (where I grew up) … testing every door to every public building just to see what might be beyond.
There were times when I would head out the door on a 31-degree day in summer wearing shorts, a T-shirt, rubber boots and carrying a flashlight. With these things in hand, myself and friends would climb into the broken storm sewer grate and wander the subterranean depths of the city for hours carefully listening beneath manhole covers to avoid climbing out onto a busy street. I would have been about 12 years old during these antics.
On Sundays it was fun to explore the concrete pipe manufacturing property, as they were closed. We could get into the building by climbing the 45-degree angled conveyor belt which would bring us out inside the locked building at the very top. At this point we would climb around the catwalks until we got bored and left to ride our bikes to new destinations.
We were everywhere: abandoned buildings, junk yards (running from many a dog), empty railroad cars, public buildings in the summer like the university, the riverbanks, etc.
On the hotter days you might find me swimming under a bridge downtown with new friends who happened to be there. Sometimes we would swim to the top of the dam and send ourselves down the wet, moss-covered concrete chutes to rocket into the river below.
Most weekend and summer nights were spent sleeping over at a friend’s or having them over. Somehow, we didn’t starve to death but scratched what coins we could and grabbed a lunch of chips and or candy to tide us over until dinner.
This was life. We didn’t know there were alternatives. There were no helicopter parents. It was no safer then than it is now. It’s probably safer now given the attentiveness to public safety.
Perhaps this lifestyle is what has made so many Gen X people the type who just “figure it out” when it comes to problems, obstacles, etc. in life. We had little in the way of resources other than ourselves.
I’m not suggesting this is the healthiest approach to problem solving and life in general—it’s just how we developed. I think it’s better to seek help in community when you can.
Still, despite the many traumas life can throw at a kid growing up as a Gen X, I appreciated the unbound freedom.
Heck, when I walk past an abandoned building I still want to pull a board off a window and climb in to explore, but these days I try to resist (emphasis on try).
