[ejenk21]

Synopsis: Generation X comes into its own.


I must see my mother today. I have to. It's the law. It's Careday.

We have to see Mom once a year. Dad is optional. Because men aren't important in the parenting process, that's why. Everyone knows that by now. Seventy years of trials failed to find a way to bind a baby to breasts that don't have working nipples. So we see Mom. My Careday is June 11, same as my birthday.

Careday was the last gasp, politically, of the baby boomers. We finally outnumbered them in the twenties. The "Goring Twenties", they called it, when the young Olympians threw off the tyranny of their cannibalistic parents. Some of the old bastards read the demographics on the wall and created Careday as a final extortion. We paid for their careers, we paid for their divorces, we paid for their journeys of self-discovery, and we paid for their breakdowns. In money, we only paid for their retirements. For a while. Now we pay for warehousing. They used to pay for warehousing, too. They called it day-care.

I remember a few kids who didn't spend all their time in day-care. Their Moms dropped them off for a few hours each day of --what?-- healthy social development. Not too healthy when I had something to say about it. I punched them out, the trusting little dorks. I didn't envy them; why should I? They were the weird ones, not us.

I wonder what they do, now that their good Moms are falling apart like rotten mushrooms. I wonder if they keep grandMom at home, in her own room, with her own 3V. I wonder if they hire patient, careful nurses, sweet-souled and smelling of potpourri. I wonder if, for a few hours a day, they bring their mothers to visit with the ones like my Mom. To be with companions their own age. To socialize, to take them out of themselves. To play at simple sports for the exercise. To talk of bygone people and events so familiar to them and so tedious to us.

I could give a shit. They all stink. All the old people stink.

I have to hold my nose when I see Mom. I could pay a supplement, something beyond the Gericare minimum, and they'd bathe her more often. But hell, I have my own retirement to worry about. I've been thinking about a dacha in Manitoba. Trout. They still have some trout up there. I suppose I could afford a few more bucks for Mom. But would she appreciate it? Would she think about the cost at the University of Hiroshima? Would she think how long it takes her own granddaughter to earn that many yen on her back? Fat chance.

I can avoid the smell. I have to see her; I don't actually have to touch her. That was another thing about those kids. They liked to be held by their mothers. Weird, I tell you. Nobody held me, dammit. Nobody holds me now. I never even held Margie, except to keep her in position. Nor she me, for that matter. Kill her if she did. She had to hold Wendy, of course. They trained Marge in class to hold her babies. I guess she finally got to like it. Fine. But I'm not a baby.

Mom's another story. You'd think she was a baby herself, the way she cries and screeches on Careday. Clings, too, if I let her. She better not do that today. It's my birthday, and I don't like having every birthday spoiled by her tantrums.

She'd better control herself. She'd better behave. Because, starting with this Careday, I can exercise my rights under Title IV of the Careday act, as amended in 2035. We call it the Roe-Wade amendment, after the two who provided its moral underpinnings.

Roe-Wade means, dear Mom, that you have to learn what you made me learn: to accept the reality of a bedrock selfishness, to masquerade without a tear on your face despite what is in your heart, to survive on store-bought love.

You better be nice to me now, Mom. Or you are history.

[Corneac]

This looks great ejenk...I'll take a closer look this afternoon. Keep participating around the iste and I'll put this up.

[Lubesh]

Simply told but vividly harrowing details of what could and might happen yet!

[angel]

this is totally cool i like this alot. beautiful flow and graceful language will there b a part two?

kel

[Jon%]

I loved the venom in your voice. Justified or not, I often feel the same way towards that particular generation. And at the end, the Roe-Wade amendment... haha!

[SeaN]

This is a very well written piece! It is interesting in many ways. Excellent read!

[CurranSF]

Very cool, love the tone. I enjoy how it's both scathing and somewhat light.