MILLENNIALS

I was wearing what I considered to be an age-appropriate outfit--black slacks, combined with a black and white blouse topped with a white jacket with zippers--when an acquaintance commented, "You look like a millennial."  I took his comment to mean that the outfit was too "young" for me to be wearing.  I answered, "Oh, I think it looks very 1960s, rather like something Mary Quant might have designed."

  I wasn't surprised that he had never heard of Mary Quant but I told him to google her and Rudi Gernreich.

                                                       ( MARY QUANT, CIRCA 1965)

In further discussion I told him that fashion was cyclical so he should expect to see maxi skirts and bell-bottoms from the 70s soon.  He said that millennials would never wear anything like that.  I laughed and said, "Do young people actually use that term to describe themselves?"  He said that they do refer to themselves as millennials and he asked, "Don't you call yourself a baby-boomer?"  I said, "Oh, I was born BEFORE that."
                                                                                                                                                                                 
 He gasped and asked, "Just how the Hell old are you?"                                                                                            

I said, "You should read the scathing definition of millennial from The Urban Dictionary."   See here:

The Special Snowflakes.  Born between 1982 and 1994, this generation is something special because Mom and Dad and their 5th grade teacher told them so.  Plus, they have a whole shelf of participation trophies at home, so it has to be true.  They believe themselves to be highly intelligent;  teachers and lecturers gave them "A"s in order to keep Mom and Dad from complaining to the Dean.  Unfortunately, nobody explained to them the difference and education and grade inflation, so they tend to demonstrate poor spelling and even poorer grammar.  At work, millennials believe themselves to be overachievers who just aren't understood by their loser bosses.  They are the only generation in the universe to understand the concept of work life balance and to actually want to find a fulfilling career.  All those "Gen Ex" losers just don't get it, what with hoping to keep their jobs and pay their bills but they are just corporate drones, so who cares what they think?   They should be smart like Millennials and get Mom and Dad to pay for all that stuff until they can work out what they want to do with their lives and then get rich doing it.  Example:  "I've been here at this job 6 months now and I've been here mostly on time, so I should get a raise 'cause I've paid my dues."

Of course that is a generalization because I know some people of that age group with values and strong work ethics, but one whom I know, actually could not believe that, after his being fired from three jobs in less than a year, his grandmother no longer wanted to give him a $1,000 a month to support what he calls his "life style".  He said, "Now that I really need it, she won't give me any money."  I said, "Why don't you just get any job you can?"  He responded, with great surprise, "That's just what she said."  I said, "Yeah, that's kinda the way old people think."  He said, huffily, "I just wanna do what I want to do."  Of course, his being fired was never HIS fault because the bosses were always dumb and he actually uses the term "losers" to describe them.  I said, "WOW, these people have been doing their jobs for years, and you think that you're smarter than they are."  Oh, the arrogance of youth!