The Generation Game
Ansel’s swimming class was cancelled (second week in a row), so we went to library then joined to public swim an hour later.
There was a young family there—parents in their twenties, uneducated, with a baby girl and a boy slightly older than A. The boy obviously didn’t have much experience in the water, and he was clearly scared. But his frustrated parents (particularly his dad), instead of reassuring him and making him feel safe, were making things worse and creating additional pressure by saying “Stop being silly, stop panicking, put your feet on the floor.”
They no doubt meant well, but it wasn’t helpful, and the poor kid was so upset. He kept asking to stand on the steps, but his parents weren’t hearing him. It was hard to watch. I felt so sorry for that poor kid because he wasn’t doing anything wrong—he just wasn’t meeting his parents expectations, and they were not being supportive at all. And you just know he has to deal with this same problem in other areas of his life where they struggle to empathise with him.
They obviously cared about him but, because they didn’t know how to deal with the situation, he probably felt absolutely uncared for. It’s the kind of thing that will have knock-on effects on his sense of self-worth and relationships with his parents and other people. The poor kid is going to have a tough childhood simply from a lack of understanding that is so easy to fix. It was really quite upsetting to watch.
Been reading Generation X this week. (Why did I wait so long?) Quite different to what I expected—and so much better. Coupland has such a unique voice and describes things in such vivid, peculiar ways—kind of like a lab technician on acid. It’s a fantastic blend of decadence, nihilism, apathy, intellectualism, and cultural critique—probably many more things too, but it’s late and I’m tired and can’t find the words. Still, it taps deeply into that romanticised imagined view I had of America while growing up in a small northern British village before people had the internet in their homes. Just snapshots from magazines woven together into a vague narrative by my imagination. I miss my pre-internet brain.