I am a Jones

For years I've not known what I am--not generationally speaking, that is. At times I've been known to even say, with some pontification, that I was born on the cusp of the Baby Boom generation and Generation X. I joined the race in 1963, at the tag end of the post-WW2 baby explosion, but just at the start of the post modern zeitgeist. I'm too young to have protested Vietnam, but too old to get anything more than my ears pierced.

I was an American without a convenient marketing tag.

It turns out, I was not alone. I was part of a lost half generation--Generation Jones. Born between 1956 and 1965, we were the target audience for the first run of Schoolhouse Rock, but got out of college before dudes with pony tails was cool. We knew driving a VW was crunchy, but didn't get tattoos unless we joined the navy or had a midlife crisis after the first divorce. We have a dim recollection of Hef once being relevant, but still can't get used to the fact that he's so freakishly old. Hippies were passe before we got to high school, but the whole grunge scene came too late to get us dirty.

We're Generation Jones, though our years don't quite add up to a whole generation. Up till now, we didn't have a stereotype, or even a sense of being part of a real generational shift in history. We just had a vague 80s sense of not being able to keep up with feeding our empty, hungering Joneses. But that was before. Now we not only have a marketing tag, we even have our own president. And he's a lot cooler than yours.