Analog Memories Pt. 1

One thing I like about being Gen X is that I remember life before the internet. We graduated from college into a pretty bad recession, and jobs were scarce. The road to a career was kind of bleak. We got entry level jobs and then worked for years and years under the thumb of our boomer bosses with little hope of advancement.

I worked as an assistant at Scholastic for not much money. Then the internet came along and the boomers were confused. But we gen xers started making websites and charging the boomers real money.

Cell phones were a long way off. We made plans with our friends over the phones in our homes and wrote those plans down on scraps of paper or in little books called planners.

I’d make a plan to meet a friend at a cafe at, say, 6:30, in a few days and then I’d go there. If they didn’t show up, maybe I’d find a pay phone and call them at home. There was no way to text or change a plan. Californians would no show more than New Yorkers. They would make several plans at the same time near each other so if someone didn’t show up they could go to their next date a bit late as a plan B. The result was a world where people made plans constantly and stood each other up. It wasn’t “mellow” to get mad at anyone for flaking out. You were supposed to not mind. I minded.

Without a phone to stare at on the subway, I would look at the faces of my fellow passengers. In the morning, I commuted to a data entry job at a bank in Long Island City. The work was tedious and it could just have been my own state of mind but everyone on the train looked as disappointed in life as I felt.

Once I got home and I told my roommate, Brooke, an odd, mousy young woman that I thought I was cracking up.

“Why?”

“I cry on the train to work.”

She sighed. “Oh, I love crying on the subway.”