Generation Chameleon... Whaaa?

Here's how it goes for Gen X (until recently, a meme-free joint):

Weird hair in high school 
Hang out at the mall & smoke
Long hair in college
Hang out at the bar & smoke
Live together with roomies
Lose religion, or find it, or change it, or forget it
Live together with lovers
Get married
Stop smoking
Have a kid 
Maybe another one
Get divorced
Get depressed
Date a barrista & feel old
Shop at the mall & smoke outside
Blame, blame, self-help 
Consider "Addiction"
Find religion, or renew it, or create it
Reunite with old friends
Shop at Whole Foods (run into your mom, envy her cart)
Consider Botox (too young/too natural/too broke)

Get remarried
Go back to school
Put kid(s) in college
Start a dream business
...and that brings us up to date.

Perhaps some of the details are different or still in the future. Perhaps you escaped the big D or secondary education, you rebel.

But if you ate popcorn (or in my case, Milk Duds) in the theater to The Muppet Movie, Star Wars, and The Breakfast Club in that order, you're familiar with the life I mentioned.

The biggest expectation of your future was that there would be a shaky economy often, social security checks never, and there may be an apocalypse anyway, so plenty of time to worry about that later. 

It's later. 

Many of us are still Imaginating our post-apocalyptic reincarnations as dirt farmers, some of us are freaking out about how much savings we've blown this year trying to maintain homeostasis, some of us have accepted the hand-to-mouth lifestyle as permanent and moved back in with our parents (again), some of us are still smug as a bug in a rug waiting to get stepped on, telling ourselves we're a little smarter and planned a little better than others of us. All of us need a rich daddy to swoop in and make this a good Disney movie. Down in front, you're blocking the flatscreen, pass the low-fat popcorn, and stop smoking pot in front of my kids, bro!

Consider this: Our kids are the 3rd generation after the apocalypse. 

It's already happened, sometime in the 60s. The fallout is still raining down, due to end this year according to the Mayans, but about to clear. Our kids are going to clean it up and carry on. They have friends all over the world. Literally. Thank you, Al Gore for inventing the internetz. 

Our kids would consider their apocalypse the satellites falling out of space & crashing their wifi, but they'd rebuild an infrastructure inside of a week. After all, they raised us, to some extent, and made our lousy keyboard music into mathematical genius, if not quite musical genius. Most of them are stuck somewhere in the morph cycle from Dora the Explorer to Epic Fail, but at least none of them have a blog! 

They're not very introspective, to their credit, and they live with regrets, but only long enough to text them, or blab them in IRC chat (how retro!) & on Facebook to a group of friends you're not privy to. (Two words: keylogger > passwords.) 

They know how to share, don't value privacy, think piracy is normal, and don't hold any conspiracy theories dear. They have the morals of our grandparents, hidden deep under a pile of dirty Hot Topic tees and old cellphone chargers. At some point, they will rise from the ashes and Not go to the University of Phoenix. 

They'll go to work. Work-y work. It won't involve a keyboard, it may look a lot like a video game, it will support your grandkids, and possibly you and what's left of the detonated Babyboomers with their rotting, over-Botoxed bedsores. (Not you, Mom, you're still my hero!) 

The best part is, they're busy building the future through relationships while we're still trying to figure out whether or not God exists and how to grow tomatoes on the porch. They're busy using technology in innovative ways to thwart our ability to monitor them--it's all a game to them. 

They’re unburdened, unfettered, and undisciplined. The ones not on Ritalin will show the others how to live wild and free, no worries! They know there's a God, but that's not something you have to go searching for or even talk about. 

They trust torrent uploads, but not drug dealers--they grew up with virtual viruses & their parents' "addictions", so trust is hard-won as much as it is hardwired with them. They work the system, changing it as they go--did you know they can listen to iPods in class?!? 

They don't ask why, they tell you why not. They are the most quickly adapting, information-raiding, inventive humans to ever touch the earth. By the time they reach White House age, they will have made it virtual or something. They'll have devices better than jetpacks, just watch.

We're all thumbs to them, especially when we text. And they're right. We were hobbled by our parents, but they're no victims. The Chameleon Generation is going to blend in with the trees while changing trees on a cellular level. 

But be not afraid, they're still human, they'll survive. And as gamers they know that you may die, and that's how you learn to win. But sometimes you have to upgrade your hardware. Which reminds me, I need to hock more designer shoes to buy that new gaming system, because somebody's got a 17th birthday coming up!