The Ballad of Billy Morris

Billy Morris was my first boyfriend. We were 12, and while it seems ridiculous to me now that I felt he deserved the lofty title of "boyfriend," it turns out I learned more about life from Billy than I was consciously aware of at the time. In fact, my strangely clear memories of him have been helping me dismantle some pretty big social and biological constructs in recent months. Just what do I think I know? Well, before I answer that, I need to highlight the most important part of my story about Billy—The year it happened. It was 1982, which means I was born into the generational age-group known as "X-er"...and that means I barely give a bleep about what you think I know.

X-er is one of the generational catch-phrases that attempt to describe massive swaths of the American public like Baby-Boomer, Millennial and iGen (born 1995-2012.) Japan, Australia, and many other countries have their own descriptive names for these age groups, but it all boils down to how each generation grew up. In biological/evolutionary terms, the catch-names describe the "selection pressures" that these groups of people grew up with (but only researchers enjoy discussing things like selection pressures. Oh, and me.) On average, these catch-phrases do a good job of encapsulating a specific time in cultural history. They might not accurately describe the generational experiences of people living in abject poverty or the ridiculously wealthy, but they catch most everyone else. The people these phrases don't accurately describe are in unique social categories based on resources, meaning they either have a lot of money/stuff or barely enough to survive. These groups are either less or more vulnerable to the "elements," or the environment they find themselves existing in. But again, most people do not find these cultural constructs very interesting to think about, so let's get back to Billy.

Billy was a total babe. I distinctly remember my best friend's older brother picking him out in our 6th grade school picture as being the best looking boy in our class. But this did not make me the prettiest girl. In fact, my agreeing to "go out'“ with him did not make me the smartest girl either. That's because Billy was obnoxious. He was loud. He got in trouble a lot. He was not especially offensive, but you could tell he was bored with what he was “supposed” to be doing. I used to meet him at a park and watch him and his friends ride their Mongoose dirt bikes around. I would usually have a friend with me, and we would all talk and just hang out. We were rarely alone together and I honestly do not ever remember even kissing him. If there had been any physical expectations put upon us, one would have considered these social interactions to be awkward, but that's just not how it was back then.

I had actually known Billy for a few years, but not very well. He lived next door to another friend of mine and we used to listen to his older brothers beat up on him as they played in their backyard (which was just below my friend's property.) My friend and I used to spy on the boys while they were wrestling in their pool, and sometimes we would taunt or yell at them from the safety of her backyard. I did not like him at first, but I guess he grew on me. And the reason he grew on me was probably because I felt like I knew more about him than most of the people at our school. I assumed based on my brief observations of his home-life that he was not entirely happy, so I think at some level, I could forgive—and maybe understand—his annoying behavior at school. But enough of this psycho-babble. Here is the part of the story about Billy I really want to share.

Our school went on a 6th grade graduation trip to a place called Camp Fox. At one end of the camp was a tall hill where the teachers would traditionally stand and judge a competition between our school and the 6th grade classes of two other schools who attended the camp at the same time. The competition was pretty random: All the students from each school would hold hands in a big circle and the teachers would use a megaphone to announce shapes we were to recreate as a group without dropping our hands. They would then call out things like "boat" or "tree." Then, from their lofty vantage point, the teachers would decide which school had made the best shape. We had heard about this tradition from former 6th graders, but I can't say that anyone seemed especially excited about the challenge. I assume the possibility of being "the best shape makers" had been motivating to kids in the past, but not the year my school participated. In fact, after a couple of feeble attempts at playing along, my school eventually stopped trying and stood, in a big circle, talking amongst ourselves.

No one in our group seemed to really care that the other schools were trying to win the competition. The final shape that was called out by the teachers was "bird," and without hesitation, Billy looked up toward the teachers on the hill and yelled "It's in the egg!" The people who heard him started laughing, and in that moment, I could not have been more proud that he was MY boyfriend. He was an unapologetic smart-ass and unwilling to do more than he absolutely needed to—and that was the moment my class earned the title of "most apathetic" that followed us until we graduated from high school. But we were far from alone. 

X-ers are known to be cynical and less concerned with status. Growing up, we felt outnumbered and on our own, but as adults we are showing signs of resiliency. The Boomers who came before us experienced a gradual distrust of institutions. They expected the world to get better with time but over half lost money in the last big recession. Many are having to work into retirement age. In comparison, X-er numbers are so small that even though our trust in institutions is also shaky, there are generally enough resources to go around. As the kids of Boomers though, Millennials will be an even bigger strain on public and environmental resources, so depending on institutions like the government does not seem like a very safe option for them. But what they can depend on are their phones. And why not? They are instantly responsive and among the most powerful tools on the planet. With one device you can achieve almost anything you want; Find a job, order a pizza, or prove your parents wrong...with next to no effort. It's not laziness you are observing with Millennials, it's efficiency. And conserving physical and mental resources is what humans are biologically programmed to do.

So back to my memory about Billy. If conserving personal resources is a human priority, how can I explain the fact that the other two schools at Camp Fox made an effort to win the shape making competition? And if it's true that X-ers thumb their noses at the rules, why were some of these X-er kids still trying? It could have had something to do with the amount of resources the other kids grew up with. You see, one of the other schools was known as the lower class elementary school in my school district and the third was known as the upper class school. And when a group has too little or too many resources available to them, the dynamics of how one relates to their environment can change. So kids with too many resources can end up looking for other "status markers" besides stuff to identify who is where in a hierarchy, while the kids with not enough resources need to fight for everything they get. In either case, the kids from those other schools would want to compete...while maybe the kids from my school had just the right amount of stuff to make us feel content with what we had, and therefore less motivated to act. Crazy how a random memory about my first boyfriend brought me to these ideas about selection pressures and the characteristics of different generations, huh? But wait! There's more!!

What started as apathy with X-ers and became "laziness"/efficiency with Millennials could become paralyzation for iGens. Because of the amount of information they have at their fingertips, iGens have already been labeled as "stressed and depressed." And just like any other generation before, their behavior/reactions to their environment should not be judged or dismissed. TMI (Too Much Information) and limited practice of real-life social skills could make iGens less equipped to handle all the emotions they are biologically programmed to feel. Surprisingly, even as an X-er, I can relate. I was not shown how to emote when I was young either. I had pre-Boomer, "Leave it to Beaver" parents who modeled blind faith in the American Dream. Despite social change going on around them while I was growing up, my parents were not going to do things like get divorced because that would go against tradition. I benefited from a stable home-life, but it was also pretty sterile.

Another way I was not like other X-ers was my concern for physical resources. Since my parents grew up during The Great Depression, very little in our household went to waste. Overall, I probably appeared naive; too trusting and concerned that my existence might be overly taxing on my surroundings. So if you only look at my age, yeah, I am an X-er...but don't try to put me in a box. And if you get old and crotchety like me one day, and perhaps hear about a kid who has a boyfriend or girlfriend and you think that they are way too young to be "dating," don't judge. Kids learn from everything they do or try, and their experiences can affect how they see themselves "fitting in" to the world, no matter what generation they grew up in.

Listen to this soundtrack for The Ballad of Billy Morris

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4PuGqgACNQ6f8LfKEXPZYC?si=93f9Beg7T_e6s-oKUIwdJQ

References

Anderson, S.M. & Chen, S. (2002). The Relational Self: An Interpersonal Social-Cognitive Theory. Psychological Review vol 109, No 4, 619-645.

Baumeister, R.F. (2005). The Cultural Animal: Human Nature, Meaning and Social Life. Oxford University Press.

David, P., Geldfeld, V. & Rangel, A. (2017). Generation X and Its Evolving Experience with the American Dream. The American Society on Aging, 41 (3) 77-83. https://www.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/research/surveys_statistics/life-leisure/2018/genx-american-dream.pdf

Ellis, B et al (2017). Beyond Risk and Protective Factors: An Adaption-based Approach to Resilience. Perspectives on Psychological Science, Sage Journals. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1745691617693054

Henrich, J. (2016). The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making us Smarter. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) & Oxford (UK).

Johnson, L.K.D (2018). The Light Triad Scale: Developing and Validating a Preliminary Measure of Prosocial Orientation. Western University, Ontario. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7588&context=etd

Kreider, T. (2019). Power? No, Thanks. I'm Good. New York Times, Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/opinion/power-is-overrated.html

Pinker, S. (2015). The Village Effect: How Face-to-face Contact can make us Healthier and Happier. Random House, Canada.

Walker, S. (2018). The Eisenhower Code: Happy to Serve, Reluctant to Lead. The Wall Street Journal, Online. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-eisenhower-code-happy-to-serve-reluctant-to-lead-1544191201

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