Let me make one thing
clear. I don’t knit. I wish I did, but I don’t. This blog isn’t about knitting,
anyway. It’s about a gap way bigger than my thigh gap, which—if you’re
wondering—is the term assigned to describe the space between a woman’s thighs.
In my case, it’s nonexistent. I don’t have time to talk about non-existent
things (Generation Xers don’t, as a rule), so instead I'm going to conquer something that exists with a vengeance. The generation gap.
I called the blog Knitting with
the Enemy because it occurred to me that I spend a lot of time conversing with
older people, primarily women. And we’re different. Back in the day, I thought
it was because they were old and I was young. Being no longer young, I’ve
realized that age had nothing at all to do with the antagonism expressed between
women of different generations.
Case in point: My mother, who is nearing 80
years of age had an altercation with a woman in her nineties at the senior
center, where my mother is apparently considered to be “one of those flighty
young whippersnappers” who’ve ruined the world. Who of us haven’t been victims
of this mindset?
Take the movie Sleeping With the Enemy (See? I got around to explaining the blog title. If at first you don't succeed, yadda yadda) The film stars
Julia Roberts and some mean-looking guy and is about a woman who seems to have everything—a beautiful
home, money, lovely clothes, handsome husband—until we find out that the
husband is a bastard dictator who also beats her. (Like I said, mean.) Sure, we’re horrified when
Julia’s screen husband demands that she line up the towels just so and alphabetize
the canned goods. We gasp up phlegm when he slaps her around because the toilet
paper roll is a millimeter off-center or the lamb is under-cooked, the chutney
ruined.
As I recall, women of my generation were
clutching their theater seats to keep from running up to pummel the male lead while
screaming “You’re lucky to be getting a hot meal, you ingrate!” But there was another
group of women whose eyes were darting about in the darkness. Although ashamed
to admit it, they’d allied themselves straightaway with OCD man and remained
pretty firmly on his side, perhaps until he planted that first blow. While no one likes
to see Julia’s pretty face get messed up, thoughts like: I love a well-kept
house, or she should have dinner on
the table for her husband were floating around that theater, believe you me (Is that a thing? What does that even mean? Believe you me.) I
could feel the vibes ricocheting off the screen.
If Martha
Stewart saw that movie, she was probably wondering the whole time why the film
was even called “Sleeping with the Enemy.” He’s only looking out for her best
interest, thought Martha, as the empire she built by pointing out the inadequacies
of others flitted through her mind’s eye. What’s wrong with that?
Yeah, it took a stint in jail to mellow
her out. Let’s not let it get to that point, folks. Three words. Get off Pinterest.
If you’ll agree to do that, I’ll refrain from making
fun of the thirty-somethings walking around, shopping with their I-phones held
in front of them like old guys once held the TV Guide crossword puzzle in days
of yore. I’ll be super-supportive of the parents who are picking out their
dinner wine as their toddlers teeter on the verge of death, doing the
hokey-pokey in the seat of the grocery cart. (“Oh, look! Skylar can turn herself around!
How cute is that? I’ll send you a picture”) In fact, I’ll carry around a pile
of concussion awareness sheets, like the ones they hand out at the pediatrician, and slip one of them to parents, quiet as a Mickey. No judgment intended,
just safety. I’ll join Lean in and try to read about a support network of
working women without allowing my envy to short out the Internet. (Hey, I didn’t
have that when I was working, you young whippersnappers. Ingrates!)
It all boils down to jealousy really, and
we should rebel against that type of thing so we can all knit peacefully
together someday. Except I don’t knit.
Flabby thighs aside, we Gen-Xers have got
you all sooo beat in terms of cool demographic monikers. And that includes you,
Baby Boomers (Although Baby Boomers sounds way better than Spawn of Men and
Women Who Responded to their Fear and Uncertainty in the Face of Death By
Having Extraordinary Amounts of Sex……Or does it?)
