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Wordsmoker Anthology: Status Updates for Your Generation

July 1, 2011 in Facebook, Wordsmoker, Wordsmoker Anthropology

I have seen minor variations of this status update repeatedly among the older generation of my FB friends:

My curfew was the street light. My mom called my name, not my cell. I played outside with friends, not online. If I didn’t eat what mom cooked, then I didn’t eat. sanitizer didn’t exist, but your COULD get your mouth washed out with soap. I rode a bike without a helmet, getting dirty.. was OK, and neighbors looked out for you as much as your parents. Re-post if you drank from a garden hose and survived!

Oh, yeah, old person? Well, I was an adolescent in the 80′s, and here’s what I have to say about that:

My curfew was after Dukes of Hazzard or Miami Vice. My mom called my name, but I couldn’t hear her over my Walkman, at least not until the batteries ran out. I played outside with friends, but also with my Atari – what? Space Invaders and Pong were awesome. If I didn’t eat what my mom cooked, big deal – we had a thing called snacks. I rode a bike without a helmet and in the car without a seat belt, but that didn’t make it smart. I wore high-waisted, pleated, tapered-leg jeans, concert t-shirts, and Keds. Some of my neighbors looked out for us; others were too busy with their yuppie lives to care. We supported “Live Aid” and “We Are The World” — no matter how shitty the music, we knew it was for a good cause. Repost if you tried New Coke and survived!

I want to hear from the Wordsmokers how you would represent your youth in status update, generation-baiting form.

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  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/renesance/ Rene Sance

    We didn’t have electricity, so we had to thread electrons by hand through a wire when we wanted to listen to Gilbert and Sullivan on the Victrola.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/mama-penguino-2-2-2/ Mama Penguino

    @ Rene Sance: What’s electricity?

    I remember a carefree existence in the oceans surrounding Pangaea where before the breaking up of the supercontinent, we played tag and whiffle ball and avoided the gap-toothed lystrosauri who tried to make snacks of us. We spent long days near the southern polar ice caps without hovercraft mothers scolding us for not wearing our hats and mittens, and daredevil nights dodging failed rifts and cooling lava. It saddens me that kids today will never know such freedom.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/renesance/ Rene Sance

    Our curfew was when the saber-tooth tigers came out. The other parents were too busy trying to discover fire to pay much attention to what we did. We ate whatever Hairy Mammoth Dad could catch, and were damn grateful for it. Repost if you went to high school in the Pleistocene Age and survived!

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/mama-penguino-2-2-2/ Mama Penguino

    I lived in a more dangerous time and carried a large genome, day and night. I didn’t get to play; there was work to do. I was responsible for my own food, via a simple contractile vacuole to maintain osmotic equilibrium. Re-post if you were forcibly divided, but retained the nucleus and survived!

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/kausaustralisandsaturn/ Worthless Emo

    Well!
    It all begins with suicide, anomie, and cutting.

    Being an Emo, I got dragged into nexopia–before facebook. All my Emo friends would post their suicidal poetry, rant about child abuse, and explore how much they hated everything. I loved it. Emo consciousness was born out of this network, or some may argue myspace, because Emo’s realized they weren’t alone. They could find other creepy kids who posted pictures of spiders, coffins, and slit wrists. Some thought they were vampires–the vampire Emos. Others stayed true to the pure blooded Emos, while many frayed into the Emo-skids, and the Emo-whores. Emo-jocks are becoming more popular, but I was gone by then.

    Of course the waves upon waves of police investigations due to somebody’s online threat or suicidal status update became quite frequent. That made me sad.

    I often felt I would have fit in better with the anorexic girls if I were to have done it all over again. Or the atheist-academic-liberals. Actually there were often several strains of Atheists. The atheist-academics, the atheist Emos, the non-affiliated atheists. This was before anybody used the “religious views” or whatever. We named our tribes by using pictures or quotes to decorate our pages.

    Sigh

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/latterdaylenin/ Latterday Lenin

    Twenty years from now this is going to be just a few bytes of information blasted directly into our brain stems at 16G speeds from the Federal Zuckerment of the United Friends of Farmville that reads:


    My curfew was the afternoon genital inspection. My mom called the nanofibers in my iClothes, not my Super Fun Stay In Touch Mandatory Wish Implant. I played online with pedophiles, not in the Wireless Shame Arena. If I didn’t eat what mom picked up at The Farmville Farmer’s Market and Driver’s License Division, then I had to cook things myself in the iCrowave. Horniness injections didn’t exist, but you could get free tingle pops at the Sextual Health Center. I rode in my parents’ minivan with the FourSquare disabled (yes, you could actually turn it off back then,) getting dirty meant you actually had to touch yourself or someone else, and friends looked out for your Farmville as much as the Zuckerment did. Re-post if you played hooky from a few Status Updates and survived!

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/muskegharpy/ muskegharpy

    Cusper here. Straddling the line between x and y. Between a controlling helicopter mom and a permissive dad. First kid on my block to get a bike helmet and shoot a rifle. Weekdays were highly regimented school-soccer practice-piano lessons. Only allowed to go as far as my mom could see me. Weekends spent in the woods, running with my wild friends. Playing cribbage late into the night, learning at a young age how gullible drunk men were.

    Mostly, it was a parade of technology. Landlines to pagers to cell phones. A menagerie of plastic crap. My little ponies, she-ra, Jem and the Holograms. I fucking miss Jem.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/nodebutante/ NoDebutante

    @all: You are very clever. YOUR status updates would be worth reading any time!

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/mediahohoho/ mediahohoho

    Re-post if you drank from a garden hose and survived!

    My curfew was 6 pm prayer and bible study. My mom refused to use my name, claiming that names were “fancy” and “vain.” My friends and I weren’t allowed to pray unless we’d witnessed the good news to at least four strangers, performed at least one exorcism and prophesied in tongues, then we could play (but “play” meant competitive bible verse recitation). If there was food at the table I had to let the Ugandan missionary staying in my room have seconds before I could see if there was anything left for me. If not, I had to thank Jesus for purifying me with hunger. I got my mouth washed out with soap for saying “ain’t.” My parents sent my bike to a Chinese orphanage for my ninth birthday, but let me keep the Schwinn box it came in. Neighbors just kind of sadly shook their heads when I walked by. Re-post if you tried to hang yourself with the garden hose and survived.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/geodejane/ GeodeJane

    Mother was devoted to us girls and we did pretty well, the four of us, after we were left on our own. I’m the youngest and as these things get scripted, its no surprise that I was doted upon and as a result, a bit of a baby. Maybe they were extra kind because of my speech impediment. I had a terrible lisp. Maybe it was because of my peculiar corkscrew curls. Maybe it was my moon face. Anyway, everything changed when my lovely mother met a fellow named Brady. He was raising three sons. They were living all together but they were all alone.

    Next thing you know, they got married and I had three brothers and a dog named Tiger. Tiger did not last longer than two seasons, which sucked, because he was the best part of this new lifestyle. I always wanted a dog. That and the house that my architect step-father designed and built for us. It was way better than the old apartment over the bar. So many things changed.

    Later on, I discovered that my mother was my step-father’s beard and that she had a romantic relationship with my oldest step-brother. Also, both of my sisters could not stand each other. In addition, I came to understand why every meal included bacon, ham and tenderloins. The housekeeper Alice was banging the local butcher. “Pork chops and apple sauce” was the family mantra. She was our whore.

    My happiest memories are of the days when my brothers and sisters and I would go to wild locations like Hawaii, dress like Elvis, and sing to tourists who were on budget vacations enjoying getting drunk in the lobby or the Tiki Lounge. Good times.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/geodejane/ GeodeJane

    ♫ Re-post if you can relate. ♫

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/geodejane/ GeodeJane

    BTW, drank from the fire hose and survived.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/latterdaylenin/ Latterday Lenin

    Drank from a mountain stream in the Uintas and survived, though not without giardia.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/mediahohoho/ mediahohoho

    We weren’t allowed in the double wide when it was one of daddy’s cooking days, what with all the horrible chemicals and the ever-present specter of catastrophic explosions. So we rode our bikes across the interstate, daring each other over and over and over until one of us got hit or there was crash. Neighbors knew us but only paid attention when the cops were watching the place or a big deal was going down. We drank out of the garden hose because after 12 hours or so of riding our bikes, we were really fucking thirsty.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/kausaustralisandsaturn/ Worthless Emo

    @ Geode

    ♫ Re-post if you can relate. ♫

    Step’s ex was rebounded to the author’s ex who murdered people in this book

    The step’s ex finally died last summer, murderer needed to find a new fuck buddy, and in honor I decided to read the whole thing in one go. Couldn’t stomach it, so I had to read it in bursts. I think it explains the worst of the worst, regardless of race or heritage. The immediate family is white, without much religious or cultural poison. The book-people are more engrained, but the rock bottom feels the same for the white spawn just as much as the brown.

    I keep hearing things like “affirmation of spiritual healing”, but I see it as the ultimate childish “use God as an excuse to heal” experience. And not just any God but the God that appeals to my skin color and blood. Also that–rock bottom.

    Read.

    Whats your hair color right now? I had a dream that Geode was blonde.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/mama-penguino-2-2-2/ Mama Penguino

    Rene Sance wrote:

    Our curfew was when the saber-tooth tigers came out. The other parents were too busy trying to discover fire to pay much attention to what we did. We ate whatever Hairy Mammoth Dad could catch, and were damn grateful for it. Repost if you went to high school in the Pleistocene Age and survived!

    Smokie nom, please.