¿Que Quieres Llegar A Ser?

Every generation harbors the notion that they are at the forefront of change, riding in the vanguard of revolution, that this time, it will all be different. The ’60s had sex, drugs, and rock & roll. The ’70s had love and peace. The ’80s had, well, leg warmers, Reagan, and the beginning of the end of the Cold War (wow, this is an awkward, bulky sentence). The ’90s brought rock & roll back, under a new guise, followed up closely by the dot com boom and its fiery end in the ’00s.

What does the end of the first decade of the Second Millennium hold? Do we truly live in different times, or is this generation plagued by more of the same, the S-Squared, D-Squared Syndrome? Can this generation, my generation, even lay a claim to sameness? We have had no Great War, no Defining Moment, and no Overarching Movement to bring us together, barring the exponential pace at which life seemingly accelerates. Is there a Moore’s Law for the rat race?

Sitting here, staring at a high-gloss TFT screen, punching numbers into cells, my thoughts can’t help but wander. Memories of a carefree past flit through my peripheral mind vision. Weekends at the public pool where my favorite uncle taught me to swim; two eggs and one thin slice of ham, suspended on half a brick of instant noodles, at that roadside stand with the blue tarp-on-a-stick that acted as the roof; asking my grade school crush what <gender neutral pronoun> wanted to be when <gnp> grew up.

That pool is thousands of miles away, the stand was razed years ago to make way for luxury apartments, and my crush, last I heard, became a hairdresser. But the question I posed still remains. What do I want to be when I grow up?