Headache

Another intern got a job. Ok, that’s two out of three. I guess it’s just up to me to get on the ball. My boss extended my internship for another three months to finish up this project. Ho-hum, no medical insurance for a few more months, but it gives me a little more time to convince them to put me in the London office!

People need to stop celebrating things on weekdays. My head is killing me. We started at a wine bar. Now, wine and I get along fine, if we’d stayed there, all would’ve been well. But then, the girl of the hour insisted on heading to an upscale joint for really expensive cocktails. I got yelled at for not checking my umbrella (which was dry) and had two drinks. Only two! My head hurts for two, ugh. I’ve learned from experience that my head does not appreciate Bud Light, Stella, whiskey, and vodka. These need to be relegated to Saturday nights alone. But, I couldn’t argue out of the first one, and the second just showed up...wait, I think there may have been a third.

Anyway, it was fun to get that co-worker drinking because she loosened up. She’s a bit, uh, stuck up? I can’t tell. Really, I simply can’t classify this girl. But I think that’s because she’s actually a really fun, relaxed cool kid trapped inside of some kind of mold for an uptight, business-woman. I think she’s worried about what everybody thinks of her and feels like she is a failure to her family. And all that worry comes across poorly.

She recently got married and her parents are thrilled about that. They’re thrilled she got married, not about her Ph.D., her research as a post doc, her job here at this fairly prestigious publishing company.

Someone needs to carry a big foam hand around and smack around parents who are stuck in the ‘50s. This is getting ridiculous.

Are not the Baby-Boomers the ones who marched on D.C.? Are they not the ones who reveled in the music revolution, caused the race riots, rebelled against society, burned their bras, experimented with drugs?

That generation is really starting to piss me off. Now they’re old, they look back on their childhood and claim it was the best and that everything was ruined by all the revolution and change they are responsible for. Music was pure, neighborhoods were plastic, TV was wholesome, life was perfect.

Bullshit.

Life was not perfect, take a closer look Boomers, music was censored, neighborhoods were cheap because your parents couldn’t afford much after being through a depression and a world war.

Your parents were too young, had too many kids, and left their own dreams unfulfilled. The reason your mom’s didn’t work is because they couldn’t. They weren’t allowed much opportunity, and besides they had an overflowing nest to try and maintain. TV was racist and sexist.

Your lives were not perfect, hense the hippie movement, hense the civil rights movement, hense the sexual revolution, hense the drugs. You grew up so confined and bored that the second you got out from under your parents roof you went nuts.

Some good came from that. We got one, painful step closer to equality. That was important and still is. But, you also gave us HIV, heroine addicts, cocaine as a passtime. Your government stole our social security. You went too far, way, way too far.

Then to make up for that, you gave us the childhoods you wished you'd had. And we appreciate that. Most of us have great memories of childhood.

But we’re adults now. We need jobs and you refuse to retire. We need a future and you refuse to give us our social security money. We live in a scary world, made all the more frightening because we no longer live in a 1950’s cocoon. World news spreads in seconds. We know people are dying and we can’t help them. We know wars are being fought and we can’t stop them.

We know! We know! We worry and stress and ultimately try to live our little lives. So enough, OK? Enough is enough. Retire, and read a book and have a glass of wine and just relax. Get out of our way, get out of our heads, and for the love of God, let us live our lives. Marriage does not = happiness. We’re not stupid, we know that being alone is not fun, we are not looking to be single for the rest of our lives, but it does not help one iota for you to push the idea that every woman should be married at twenty-two.

It does not help for you to push the idea that everyone should live like they did when the world was perfect, because it wasn’t. And the results of trying to live up to your expectations while competing with you in the workforce is turning perfectly normal, fun, light-hearted people into bitter shadows.