Generation X (Part 1)

 

My life is complex in its simplicity. I am the product of the many storms I have weathered—alone! I know that I intimidate people. Since my younger years, I have been labeled, “sungit” and many consider me unapproachable. Some people love me. Many others hate my guts. That’s just the way it is. I have discovered early on that it was never my obligation to please people or that I had to walk along the grain all my life. I am an outlier and I will always be that guy who stands right outside the wire separating the normal from the socially undesirable.

 

Who I am is quite obvious. What I am, is complicated at best.

 

I have always sought an answer as to what I am. Years ago, I met someone who was similarly lost and trying to find her own bearings. She was the daughter of a well-known intellectual and her wit and humor was proof of her lineage. We would hang out for coffee or wine on lazy summer afternoons in Malate. We did a couple of projects together when I was still in the photography business.

 

Late at night, over the telephone is when our minds would crack and she found me the best resource person for her personal research on the subject matter, “Generation X.”

 

Simply put, “Gen X-ers” were born sometime in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Although I was born a little later, I still considered myself as part of Gen X. I am one of the few remaining individuals who were lucky enough to have preceded the home computer, the mobile phone, pocket pager, fax machine, and digital cameras.

 

Life was quite simple back then, as old folks would declare: television and radio broadcasts would end at midnight and resume at 6am the following day; people called each other on a telephone apparatus which had a rotary-dial, a handset with a coiled cord and a docking cradle which was tethered to a cable that was lined up against a wall and sat on its own table; cars were mostly manual transmission and stick shifts were integrated with the steering column and the entire front seat was as wide as a couch; movies were shown in stand-alone theaters and seats were divided in three section—orchestra, balcony and lodge; people smoked either filters or menthol and there was only one kind of beer.

 

Kids would be out on the street, walking up to their friends’ houses and asking mothers or guardians to let other little ones out to play. Children mostly played with toys or sticks or discarded slipper soles made into boats or sometimes sand and mud and leaves from trees and the neighbor’s plants. The garbage pile also yielded other playthings like empty sardine cans which were the key component for games like tumbang-preso and taguan-lata. People either carried pocket watches or wore wrist watches to tell time and long-distance phone calls were paid for by either the caller or the receiver on the other end of the line. Letters had to be mailed and took quite some time before they reached the intended addressee. There were no 24/7 fastfood places or drug stores or convenience stores. Cash registers and gas station pumps usually rang to indicate a sale. Calculators were tabletop contraptions.

 

Telephones were not portable and if you needed to call someone, you had to find a large, red-colored, coin-operated, “pay telephone” which had its own booth to make the conversation private. One also needed enough loose coins to keep the line from getting cut. People actually stuck with their appointments as there was really no way to cancel a meeting once you walk out of the house. We could decide where to hang out on a weekend by simply agreeing to meet at a certain place, even without confirming. People simply showed up and those who didn’t never really had a good excuse. There were no air-conditioned public transportation—buses or taxicabs!

 

In those days, although fixed-blade knives were banned from airplane cabins, one could still keep a Swiss Army Knife in his pocket and not get into trouble with security. Cameras were limited in “fire continuity” as it could only take up to 36-exposures on a single roll of celluloid or film. Word processing was with a typewriter and any mistakes were wither scratched off with a special type of eraser or correction fluid.

 

One could smoke anywhere back in the day—restaurants, movie theaters, offices, grocery stores, hotel lobbies, school campuses and even in taxicabs, jeeps and buses! One never had to walk outside any establishment to light up. You smoked whenever you wanted to! I remember having smoked inside a Mercury Drug grocery, Dunkin Donuts, Shakey’s, airport lounges, Session Road, Rustan’s, and as late as the early 2000s, in Robinson’s Ermita.

 

We drank water from the tap and bottled water was unheard of. There was only one variant of Coke. Pale Pilsen was the only beer served in most restaurants. There were no portable music devices like MP3 players. There was always a large ashtray right outside the elevator so you can stub out your cigarette before going in. We rode bikes without helmets or any safety gear. Television sets were part of the furniture and there was only one per household. Every home had an upright piano and at least several family members knew how to play it. Traffic was non-existent. Policemen carried sticks and 6-shot revolvers. Buses had wooden benches. You either did your own laundry or had someone come to your house to do it for you for a fee.

 

Today’s generation might think life was hard back then but little do they realize that technology is turning them into slaves of The Machine—a real-life, “Matrix”. They have lost their ability to move and think. They are wasting away intelligence and human emotion.

 

(to be continued)