Generation Gap, 2

Today, I leave the calendar and move to the lotto. In case the idiom is lost in translation, I just mean to say that I’m turning 32 on this very day. I have one year left until my “Jesus year,” the year in which you’re supposed to accomplish your major goals or live up to your life’s purpose. Changes have been afoot, and things are looking up—as, I like to believe, they always are. Personally, I’m just happy I have a clean plate. No extra baggage, no things unsettled, no wringing of hair over things lost.

Just a lot of extra weight to lose. But that’s another story.

In my preceding column piece, I wrote about how many of my younger colleagues don’t even remember Simon Soundman and the other human puppets in Sesame Street. I thought this over, and remembered a whole lot of other instances of pop culture generation gap.

Some of my officemates, for example, don’t remember Transformers as an animated series; thus, my initial frustration over Bumblebee not being a Beetle was lost on them. Few remember Astroboy the animated series at all. The generation after mine will grow up knowing my beloved boy robot only in 3-D.

Incidentally, I have hesitations about watching Astroboy the movie, now showing, for the sole reason that I don’t want what little I remember of it to be corrupted by a fresh take on the story. The series had very touching episodes—I remember crying over Astroboy, who kept “dying,” so many times, compared to the one time I cried over Voltron Lions (when the Blue Lion pilot died), the animated Transformers the Movie (when Optimus Prime died)—because of the father-son angles they explored and the “young love” subplots. The good news is that friends my age have been giving it good reviews and none so far have expressed disappointment. Thank goodness for that. Astroboy was perfect as it was.

Fairly recently, a verbal tussle ensued on my Facebook wall after I synced a Tweet with a link to the blog that alleged that the DSWD was stockpiling imported relief goods and not distributing them fast enough. One person mistook my posting the link as my official stand, and started attacking me in a more or less personal way. Friends came to the rescue or joined in on the conversation, and soon enough it was like John Rambo (kids, he’s one of the most unforgettable characters Sylvester Stallone portrayed; look him up) versus a multitude of people who just wanted to talk.

That issue has been more or less settled—the bayanihan spirit won, in my opinion—but I’ve also realized that maybe, just maybe, the person who assumed I had already taken a stand hadn’t really caught up with the speed of  the Twitterverse just yet. In Twitter, you don’t take just one post and run with it. Everything’s organic as information flows continuously and people can change their mind in real time. Linking is not the same as promoting, unless you say it outright; it’s more of taking part in a dialogue and seizing a great opportunity to clear things up—if you’re not myopic, that is.

I checked, and he’s three years older. Three years is a huge divide, where technology is concerned. That’s almost a university batch that didn’t have to depend on the Internet for research. That can spell a lot of difference on your future Internet use.

Still, nothing beats the story of this spirited child of the nineties co-worker I have. She’d never stopped rocking aviator sunglasses, she’s the type who can still say “rakenrol” without looking like a poser, and she still looks as if she has a bong stashed somewhere. She turned a year older some months ago and got a tattoo of three stars and a sun to mark the occasion. She’d always known the sun in the Philippine flag to have eight rays, so eight rays her tattoo had.

A few days later, the Senate-House panel okays the bill adding a ninth ray.

“Consider that a statement about your generation,” I advised her.

“That, I will,” she said.

Rakenrol. 

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