“Talkin' 'bout my generation!”
Am I the last one to know about this…this “Generation Jones” category? I saw it referenced this week. It was news to me. I quote Wayne Campbell when I say, "I was not aware of that." I've always had an interest in the traits and characteristics of the post-WWII generations: Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z and whatever's coming next. Being born in 1958, people around my age have been labeled as the back end of the Boomers. I've never felt a part of that generation, though; that was more my older brother and sister's. I felt too young to be a Boomer and too old to be Gen X - in between somehow.
Now it comes to my attention that there's something called “Generation Jones.” People born between 1954 and 1965. It seems it's been around a while, this idea. A guy named Jonathan Pontell came up with the designation in 1999. Where have I been? When I learned about it, it made perfect sense. The name is derived from a combination of the terms “Jonesing” (desiring something) and “ Keeping up with the Joneses," a term relevant to that time period. Unlike true Boomers, we Jonesers were just kids during the turmoil and cultural changes of the 60s. We witnessed those changes through the lens of childhood. My very earliest memory is the JFK funeral and the horse-drawn casket on black and white TV. In our adolescence we experienced the Vietnam War on the nightly news, the assassinations of MLK and Bobby Kennedy, the moon landing, Kent State, Woodstock, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, the Manson murders, the Patty Hearst drama and Bugs Bunny, most all of it on the family TV screen. We entered our teen years with a dismal economy, an oil-embargo, gas rationing, double-digit inflation and Watergate. From there we became punks, yuppies and new-wavers, but we never were hippies.
Jonesers, with their particular perspectives, have left a mark on the culture: Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Prince, Eddie Vedder, Johnny Depp, Madonna, Jodie Foster, Michael J. Fox, Keanu Reeves, Elvis Costello, Steve Jobs, Tom Hanks, Bono, Michael Stipe, Michael Jordan, Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Woody Harrelson, Jim Carrey, Axel Rose, Bo Jackson, Mike Meyers and Quinton Tarantino.
I'm glad I stumbled across this. It's good to no longer feel like a generational step-child. Generation Jones. How about that.