I had to laugh the other day. It would have been a few weeks ago that, while coaching, the girls asked if they could listen to music while they practiced. I had no problem with it, but their phones were dead or nearly out of power, so I went and plugged mine in. I looked through my phone and apparently I have quite a bit of rap music on it, inappropriate for in the school, so I put on an album of the Foo Fighters’ greatest hits.
The girls said that wasn’t too bad. The next practice, again their phones weren’t charged, so I put on something else. Apparently the Red Hot Chili Peppers wasn’t a good choice as every single practice since they’ve made sure at least one of them has a phone with enough juice to play their own music.
It’s funny because I remember being about their age and my parents complaining about my music being “noise,” so of course I bug the girls about that.
Anyways the girls I coach, when I asked if they wanted my music again, said “No thank you… it’s like really slow.” While I’m over here wondering, “The Foo Fighters are slow?” Which when compared to their music it is actually. And I listen to the “noise” until they play the good old music from my youth, like Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” not sure where they found that but I approve.
I realized, as they played any new music though, that I’ve definitely been living in the past. When it comes to satellite radio I definitely sit on two channels more than any other “the ‘90s on 9” and “Pop2K” on channel 10.
When Adele’s hit song “Hello” came out, it was a solid few months before I had even heard it… in fact it was losing popularity by the time it came out and I had friends that looked at me incredulously when I asked what the song was. Apparently it had been quite popular for quite some time.
From those two channels I’ll zip over to country music, again from the ‘90s or early 2000s, or I’ll zip back to tunes from the ‘70s, ‘80s, and outlaw country before I go to any new music.
The whole ordeal got me thinking about generations and how they view each other. Things change, they really do. But is one generation really that different from the next? Music although different, is still music. Passing notes in class is now sending texts in class. Kids still go and hang out together on the weekends. It’s all the same, but technology and the mediums have simply changed.
I always find discussions about generations interesting because I’m, depending on the classification, am either a Generation Y or Millennial… and both get a bad rap for being lazy and entitled. But, how did those who grew up in the Silent Generation – during the mid-1920s to early 1940s – view the Baby Boomer generation? I would suspect with the thought that they weren’t as hardworking as they were, after all they had to survive the Dirty Thirties and maybe they even went off to fight in World War II. So, would they have seen the generations after them as lazier? I would imagine so.
And how do I view kids today? Well, I don’t think I really view the kids as being lazy or entitled, so much as I feel like we’ve given them too many accommodations and hand out participation ribbons, meaning we’re under developing their sense of drive in this world. It’s not their fault, but we don’t seem to be pushing them to their full potential, which can make kids come across as lazy or entitled. But there are lots out there that are hard workers, they just get lumped into a stereotype of their generation, much like mine or anyone else when thought about by the generations older than them.
