Millenials #NeverForget

People love to hate on Millenials. I get it. It’s fun to complain about people younger than you. Why? Because it makes everyone feel better about being older. Well, guess what?

We’re getting older, too. Millenials are turning 30 — please, leave us alone! #SorryNotSorry we’re not the young irresponsible ones anymore! We are no longer the enemy. We are getting flabby, going to bed early, concerned with fertility, and — wait for it — complaining about people younger than us. All signs that we are no longer the entitled, self-centered whiners [read: typical adolescents] we’ve been made out to be.

Please cease your categorization of us with a generation you haven’t taken enough time to research yet. Discontinue the attitude that we were all born plugged into a computer. That’s not our generation! That’s the next one. Time to move on, folks!

Older generations, I implore you, stop rejecting us and maybe we can become your new friends. You have to know we’ve been knocking on your door lately. We’re so desperate to differentiate from the younger ones that we’ve started collecting vinyl records and that is a randomly expensive form of dedication to years gone by. In fact, we’ve started doing all kinds of old-school things like brewing our own beer, engaging in the fabric arts, and using the 1880-1900 census lists to name our children.

That’s right, many of us have children, which means we simply cannot be the generation to go after anymore. Why would anyone want to take jabs at a bunch of 30-something, debt-ridden, sleep-deprived parents?

Whatever we may have been like as teens and young adults (and truly, it seems like we were just like every other generation if you really look at the grand scheme of human history), we are now losing steam. More of us are turning 30 every day, and we just do not have the energy to vie for your approval much longer. And we refuse to be associated with THEM. THE OTHERS. THOSE WHO HAVE NOT BEEN NAMED.

You may think I’m being a little defensive about why there is a hard line between us and the next kiddos. And we’re a little tired of people acting like Millenials don’t know who their own generation is by patronizing us with all these statistics, ranges of years, or “work ethic characteristics” to identify the Millenials.

Every Millenial I know needs just one question for a fellow young-looking person:

“Where were you on 9/11?”

If your answer doesn’t contain the words “school,” then you’re not a Millenial.

That’s it. I don’t need to know anything else about you. Based on what grade you provide in that answer, I can even guess which Nickelodeon shows you were into and whether you ever had a MySpace page.

Let me put it into perspective for the people who are still wishy-washy — for those people who think everyone born after Reagan was elected president must be a Millenial. This is how I break it down:

I am a mid-generation Millenial. I was in late middle school during 9/11. Go ahead and put me beside a kid born in 2000 and call it all the same. It is not the same. Let me repeat: It is not the same. Why? Why wouldn’t it be?

Because Millennials are the last generation who will never forget. Where you were on 9/11 is directly indicative of your generation, and 9/11 was an event that absolutely defined Millennials’ development.

The next generation doesn’t remember, and that’s why there is a hard line between us. They think we are old because we do remember and will never forget.

So let’s close up this silly generational gap and be besties so we can remember together and share our stories with the generations to come.