This is the Nostalgic Generation | Teen Ink

This is the Nostalgic Generation

January 23, 2014
By AudreyAKAThatWriterGirl GOLD, New York, New York
AudreyAKAThatWriterGirl GOLD, New York, New York
11 articles 0 photos 8 comments

Favorite Quote:
"But sometimes it's 9am on a tuesday morning and you're standing at the kitchen bench waiting for the toast to pop up. And the smell of dusty sunlight and earl gray tea makes you miss him so much you don't know what to do with your hands." - Scanlan


You are walking down the sidewalk, listening to music with your headphones on, just like every other day, when you stop short. You’ve almost crashed into a little girl. This girl is not particularly young, just rather thin, with bones peeking out between her crop top and her high waisted jeans. She is looking down at an iphone, not unlike your own, with her make up heavy eyes, pushing up her nonprescription glasses out of habit. She is shaking in her flannel despite the tall socks that are visible above her clunky black boots, her thin legs shiver as if she were wearing the black leggings she’s set aside for tomorrow. You hate her already. Why can’t you be that thin? F*ck her, you think. Only you don’t use an asterix in your thoughts because censorship is wrong and you believe in free speech, like Obama and George Washington.
When you sidestep to the right you find her friend, another short girl. This one is not as thin and her belly spills out unflatteringly of her crop top and over her jean shorts and sheer leggings. Ew, you think. She should go on a diet. You would never go out in public looking like that. You know better than to go out into the world looking anything less than acceptably sheek and suitably kissable. Only you don’t think kissable because you’re not some timid little girl, you’re an adult and like that girl in Rock of the Ages you are hot and unafraid of your sexuality. She is colder than the first girl as she doesn’t have the socks or flannel to shield her from the cold wind. She does, however, have a lit joint between her lips to keep her content. The girls do not talk, instead they browse their own phones and send messages between them.
You turn around and head the other direction because you realize that you have been going the wrong direction, having been mildly distracted by your amazing 1980s music. God you wish you lived then. Why is there no good music anymore? It’s all trash. Like Miley Cyrus, god help her. Not that you really believe in god. Religion is kind of mainstream and you like to be unorthodox and original. Anyway, everyone’s talking about her, Miley Cyrus. Most people think she’s trashy. You think she’s trashy. Who twerks on national television? Not me, you think. You have the courtesy to only try twerking in the comfort of your own home when you have a few friends over. You know that you’re too white to twerk. Everyone knows white girls can’t twerk.
You don’t think twerking is any cruder than grinding, and of course grinding is the only kind of dancing you do other than the classic jumping fist pump and the all alone dancing in my room that no one talks about. So what girl’s are immodest, we live in a America, we have rights. If you lived in the 1920s you’re sure no one would think you’re promiscuous. You never think about how they would treat you when you told them you are bi. And you do think you’re bi, or at least hope you are because that’s what all the girls are now and you aren’t anti gay so like, of course you are. You are a forward thinker, like the hippies in the 60s. You are open about sexuality and if you weren’t born in the wrong generation than people would get that. You would much rather make love than war, but adults just don’t treat you like you know what you’re talking about. They just want you to go to college and get a normal job. If you lived in the past you could be a painter in Paris and you’d never have to finish high school.
It’s hard being you. It really is. Sometimes you lay awake at night wondering why oh why you couldn’t have lived in early 1900s Englands because you so could have been a character on Downton Abbey. You practice your British accent and sometimes you show it off to friends and you imagine what it would be like to live in Europe back when it was better, before all this ruddy technology. It doesn’t help that every show out there is about the victorian times or the roaring twenties or the medieval times or the stupid problems of today. And so you write a tweet about how you hate technology and some jerks send you hate on ask.fm and you tell them to screw themselves and then eachother because it’s not crude, it’s a release and they were asking for it. Now you need a new release so you turn to tumblr.
Of course then you have trouble waking up in the morning because it was already past one by the time that you’d gotten off tumblr and started contemplating the meaning of life. And there is no meaning really so you go to a school, which you hate, with your friends, that you secretly loathe or picture naked, and life goes on uselessly. You know lots of people hurt themselves but you don’t want to be such a cliche so the only means you have of distraction from the now is your weed, your starbucks, your wifi, and the guys that you hope to land if you show enough cleavage in that picture you posted on instagram. It was so much easier when a girl didn’t have to do so much to impress a guy. You long for the days when you could twirl your cigarette and the boys would line up to buy you a drink in the secret bars with jazz music.

Anyway, you’ve gotten off topic. It’s not unusual nowadays. You probably have ADHD. Everyone has ADHD now. Some people really have it, like you of course, but you figure most people are just pretending so they can get the Adderall. But back to the topic at hand, you were supposed to be walking to - lord knows. Where was it? You must have it somewhere. You scroll through your calendar, notes, recent texts, facebook events, facebook messages, get side tracked by snap chat and post a picture of you on your story with the label “Where am I suposed tobe going?? Cant remebr”.
Well, you suppose you’ll just go to the park and take some selfies before you drop back home, lock yourself in your room and cry because you’re empty inside and you still have 5 hours to do your homework and it’s already seven o’clock and how did it get that late. You don’t do it. Who needs school? Did the hippies go to school? Did the flappers? Probably not.
What a sad generation we live in, you think. I wish I lived in another time. This is literally the worst day ever, again. You belong to an immodest, unfiltered, desensitized, technology heavy world that so does not suit you at all and you wish everyone around you would just kill themselves. Ugh. “Fml” you write as your facebook status. That will show them, you think, I won’t respond and then they’ll wonder what’s wrong.


The author's comments:
please don't be insulted by this
I kind of think it's funny so check it out

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