The Coming Of Age

Hang up the bunting, pull out the streamers & don your best glad rags. I am told a party is in order for soon one of my charges reaches adulthood, soon she will be entitled to vote, drive, drink (legally) & get the much argued about tattoo without her mothers permission. This sudden swell of birthday sentiment in our household got me to thinking about the world she is coming into. Just as people offered their pearls of wisdom and prophetic views as to the world i turned 18 in I got to pondering what, in all fairness, she has to look forward too & I concluded not a lot.

If, like me, you read the morning paper over your coffee you will be only too aware that her adult life is going to spent growing gills due to global warming, never leaving the house for fear of a terrorist attack, working more hours than are in an eight day week just to pay for the poor management of the economy by world governments she didn't and couldn't vote for. Her children will listen to her harp on about films that were remakes when she was young, music that had been originally recorded before she was born then laced with an electronic drum beat by an 11 year old computer nerd in his parents attic. Fashion, if it follows the current trend, will get stuck in this 40 year loop where the grunge look will be back when her daughter is old enough to buy her 1st doc martins and get her first nose piercing.

My point is this, every generation has an obligation to make their own history, to leave their own mark on the world, a stamp saying we were here and this was us. The children of the 50's gave us slicked back hair, quiffs, hot rods & Elvis, the 60's 'Y' generation gave us free love, tye-dye, Bob Dylan & the CND symbol. The 70's kids stomped their footprint in history with punk hairstyles, Monty Python, Tartan trousers & The Sex Pistols. The 80's gave the world Madonna, Shoulder Pads, Blue eye shadow & the much feared Don Johnson from Miami Vice look (oh dear the memories), and even the children of the 90's gave us Nirvana, Summer Dresses with 14 hole doc martins, The TV show friends and outdoor raves. However i look now at the 70's punk hairstyles & face piercings, the remade 50's Elvis songs slapped together on an i-mac with a drum beat borrowed from any 90's dance track, the fingerless lace gloves Madonna wore in the 80's & the tree hugging environmentalists still spouting the same rhetoric that the 60's hippies did & i wonder what this generation has given?

In my last muse I pondered the young peoples need to have everything new, the latest of everything... Now i think i understand, it's because their culture is all old, all borrowed from generations gone by. They have nothing they can call their own, they create nothing of their own culture so material goods are their only way of feeling original. They call it 'Retro Chic' yet fail to notice that nobody went back to the horse and cart over the motor car, people didn't throw out CD's to go back to vinyl & I don't think schools have banned calculators in favour of the abacus and trigonometry tables. This i find very sad, but i can offer them one glimmer of hope, one shard of light in the never ending darkness of plagiarism.... Keep your clothes, your i-pods, your fashion magazines and your haircuts because in about 25 years when your mid life crisis kicks in... its all going to be in fashion again.