wrog

I always (quite arbitrarily) thought of Generation X this way: If you think of the true Baby Boomers as being those born 1945-1955 (within ten years of the end of WWII) who came of age in the "cultural 60s," then you had the next generation between 1955-1965 (yours, presumably) that came of age in the 70s and early 80s, and Generation X the ten years from 1965 and 1975.

Since generational shifts don't tend to map nicely to decades, the other way of looking at Generation X is anyone born after the assassination of Kennedy but before the end of the Vietnam War. Basically, people born in the cultural 60s as opposed to the chronological 60s. That puts me, born in 1969, smack in the middle of the group.

To define your generation similarly, you'd have to come up with an appropriate beginning date. Maybe the release of the first Elvis record? And you came of age in the punk, disco, and new wave era. The Blank Generation.

The next group (Gen Y) would be those born after Vietnam but before the end of the Cold War (though that's a bit longer than some of the other generations--vaguely, the Reagan-era kids.) Which means at this point we really should be talking about Generation Z--those born between the end of the Cold War but before September 11.

Of course, these generations are shorter than actual generations in the familial sense, but I think that gives a better picture. New generations tend to gain their popular cultural and historical references from two sources--their parents (two cultural generations before them) and from the people who grew up just before them (one cultural generation). So for me, both the 60s generation and the punk generation were influential to me as I grew up.

It's all pretty silly, since it's just a way to label diverse groups of people who really don't have much in common. But that's how I think of it, anyway.