"Don't Look Now, But We're A Generation"

There are two parts to a college student's persona, and for four years they fight each other to the death.

Over your left shoulder stands an image of you, age 10. This is who tells you to roll in the mud at Oozfest, race your friends on Audubon, and stay up all night making Jello for a Jello-wrestling party.

And over your right shoulder is an image of your father or mother. Now and then - more and more often - you get nostalgic and sound just like them.

"I remember Memorial Auditorium (the former home of the Sabres) like it was yesterday," I told my friend Wes last week. "What's more, I remember when you could go to a game for $10!"

He looked at me like I must have looked at my dad when he hears a folk song on the radio and says things like "Joan Baez! This is a classic. Turn it up!"

In addition to sports and music, generations are defined by great historical moments. For example, my grandmother never forgot where she was when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Ask my mother about the day Kennedy was shot, and she could tell you what the weather was like, and what she had for breakfast that morning.

Now, we have those moments too. Do you remember where you watched the O. J. Simpson verdict? Do you remember when you heard of the Sept. 11 attacks? You probably do.

Through all this, I've discovered we are becoming our own generation.

If you're not convinced yet, consider that today's "kids" - like third, fourth and fifth graders - are living an entirely different youth than we did.

A few months ago my cousin Ted, age 10, saw a thick CD case lying in the back seat of my car. "What's in the collection?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "I've got pretty much everything."

"Do you have any Good Charlotte?"

"Uh, no."

"What about Bow Wow?"

"Nope."

"How about A Simple Plan?" Ted was getting frustrated.

"Nope."

"Well then, what do you have?"

I figured it was useless to explain R. E. M. and Nirvana to the little guy.

"I guess just a lot of old stuff," I said.

So when we're old - say, putting up our Cobain posters in the nursing home - what are we going to look back on?

My grandfather's generation won World War II when it was young, and the Cold War when it was old. My father's generation led a cultural revolution in the '60s, and later, it led the transition to an information age. What about us?

Polls show we're a liberal group. We favor things like gay marriage and oppose things like pre-emptive warfare. Experts say we don't care about politics, but we volunteer in our communities like no other generation in history.

Unfortunately, we're also divided. A higher percentage of us will get a college degree, but more of us lack health insurance. More of us grew up with wealthy parents, but more of us grew up in poverty too.

If I had to put money on it, I'd say under our watch the United States will become the benevolent leader of a global society. Our politicians will be progressive. Our scientists will solve the worst threats to our environment. Our armed forces will rid the world of terror. We will be the last American generation, and our sons and daughters will be the first generation of the world.

However, not everyone shares this vision.

Curmudgeons worry our generation has been corrupted by the mass media and sucked in by the consumer culture.

They say we don't know the meaning of hard work. We are slovenly, impolite and oversexed. Many of us can't even locate the United States on a map. We're going to ruin everything they worked for.

I think they're wrong.

Either way, in 50 years I'll put in "Automatic for the People" or "Nevermind" and remember that, if nothing else, we had a lot of good music.