GenXX

 

Me and Mom (1971)

I'm an Xer...

...a Baby Buster, a Thirteener, part of the Sandwich Generation (notably pressed between the Boomers and the Millennials), a Latchkey Kid, and one of the millions of Forgotten and Godless children (according to fundamentalist jackass Jerry Falwell) born between 1965 and 1984. Fuck my life. 

In fact, I was born on January 30, 1970 at 10:31 p.m. in Columbus, Ohio, an hour and twenty-nine minutes before my mother's seventeenth birthday. In July 1971, I was taken from my parents by Child Protective Services and shuffled among foster homes and my paternal grandparents until late-December 1973 when I returned to my mother's custody. My father was in prison then, and he's in prison now. Thankfully, he'll die there. 

 

I'm not just a GenXer, I'm a GenXXer - a girl child. I'm the first born to wasted Boomer parents and eldest to (at least) 11 younger siblings (most of whom I don't know). While coming of age in Columbus during the '70s and '80s, my young experiences were far removed from the Keaton family in Family Ties. My family - my life - was more akin to Shameless. 

 

Don't expect to read saccharine-laced posts on 1980s nostalgia here. This is a memoir of my youth as I lived it within the context of poverty, dysfunctional family dynamics, Reaganomics, Conservatism and the rise of the Religious Right, the AIDS epidemic, and the end of the Cold War, and not some fucking Wednesday night sitcom or ABC Afterschool Special ("You can do it, Duffy Moon!'). 

 

Welcome to GenXX, the recollections of a disaffected youth irate. 

 

~Angie XX