I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness...

Okay, Ginsburg may have been writing about his generation 52 years ago, but my love of Beat literature is widely known, and I thought his words were a fitting introduction to my own sense of generational malaise. Whereas Ginsburg felt a need to celebrate the disenfranchised voices of his time, I find myself having difficulty in relating to the exceedingly well-represented voices of my own. Clearly, I have trouble relating to people my own age – I mean, I’m just now starting a blog, I’m not on Twitter (as if you can’t already tell, I am far too verbose to boil my thoughts down to 140 characters), and I only have 5.4GB of material stored on my iPod. But it’s not merely a problem of technology.

I don’t like to do the same things that other people my age like to do. If you look, there is not a single drunken photo of me on Facebook. I don’t mind a drink or two from time to time, but I have never been wasted in my entire life. In fact, drunk people really annoy me (especially when they’re riding public transportation at the same time as me, but that’s a post unto itself), which is why I never go to bars or clubs. My only experience with “clubbing,” such as it was, was so unpleasant that I really have no desire to try it again, even though our beneficent state has since instituted a smoking ban. How then, am I supposed to meet and interact with people of my own age?

Furthermore, if I were to encounter these elusive people, what would I have to talk to them about? For one thing, I feel completely out of touch with the humor of my generation. I have only seen one Judd Apatow movie, and that was only because I was trapped in a van in South Dakota with, among others, a frat boy who insisted we kill time by watching Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. For that matter, most Will Ferrell movies make me want to vomit, with the exception of Stranger than Fiction. I have never seen a movie in which Seth Rogen played a major role. I will grant that “D*** in a Box” and “J*** in my Pants” were funny, but every other Andy Samberg project receives a solid roll of the eyes from me. And those “Laser Cats” sketches on Saturday Night Live actually make me change the channel. If it weren’t for The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report I might begin to suspect that I’ve merely lost my sense of humor.

I even have trouble looking my age. Following my recent, and highly unfortunate haircut, I now have the hair of a seven-year-old, which only exacerbates my problem that everyone at work seemingly assumes that I’m an intern because I look so young. Marne, the Volunteer and Intern Coordinator at the museum tried to console me by saying, “Hey, in 15 years you’ll be grateful to look ten years younger!” Sure, when I’m 39, I’ll almost certainly be happy to be mistaken for 29, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any 24 year old who wants to look 14. And don’t get me started on my voice on the phone. Let me re-create my typical conversation with telemarketers:

“Hello?”

“Hi sweetie, is your Mommy home?”

“No.”

“Is there another adult there with you? You are too young to be left all alone!”

“I’m 24. I live by myself.”

“Oh, Ma’am, I’m so sorry! In that case, can I interest you –“

(Here is where I normally hang up.)

What’s a girl to do? You know that old cliché that youth is wasted on the young? I’m living proof.