Move Aside Millennials, Gen X Was Here First

By Kathy Knotts, CBM Bay Weekly managing editor

In an effort to shake my own winter blues, I went in for a massage recently.

My massage therapist was a surprise. About 28 and built like a linebacker, Ryan was not what I was expecting. Men in the wellness industry tend to be muscle-y bodybuilders or long lean yogi types. He was your average young man who looks like he used to play football. Turns out he did. And he got into massage by working with athletes.

It also turned out to be a surprising conversation, or as much of a conversation as one can have naked under a sheet while someone kneads your muscles into pliable dough.

Ryan told me he spends much of his free time playing games. But not video games—the only gaming I hear about from my town teenage sons. Ryan plays the usual softball, flag football and basketball. But he also is a member of leagues that play dodgeball and kickball.

I was floored. The very gym class games I dreaded as a child are now the hip social outlets of millennials?

Now I saw the movie and I know there is a National Dodgeball League. What came as a surprise was the fact that these are young adults who are joining leagues, playing multiple times a week. Voluntarily.

And they are loving it apparently. Ryan says they play all around the area and then everyone heads out for a beer. Except for the “old people”, who need to get home, he says. Those old people are are all of 35 years old (ahem).

This is not to be confused with another Baltimore area sport I just discovered is a thing: Dodgebow. Combine dodgeball with archery and paintball, and you have a “sport” straight out of Hunger Games. Nope. No thanks.

All this reminds me that as a member of GenX, we have set the stage for strangely nostalgic pursuits. If you bobbed your head even a little during the Super Bowl Halftime Show, you know what I mean. The movies and TV shows popular today all retain some element from the 1980s and 1990s because their creators are usually members of this generation. There’s a resurgence of tight-rolled pants, denim jackets, scrunchies, Snoop and Tupac. The New York Times Magazine ran a story appropriately titled “My So-Called Adulthood.” IYKYK, Angela.

Gen X, we are squarely in midlife. And that’s OK. And kinda fun. We may grumble about it but deep down in our slacker hearts, we are loving it.