#and an xennial

[pargolettasworld]

Yes. All of this. These aren't the exact things that my teachers would do, but these things are absolutely the sort of things they would do. To this list, I might add . . .

My second grade teacher, who decided that the last day of school would be a class birthday party for everyone who had summer birthdays and never got to bring cupcakes to class. She was absent for the last day of class, and no one told the substitute that we were having this party, and the substitute was horrified to look over a class of twenty-five second-graders who were expecting a party and she had nothing prepared. Fortunately, my mom showed up with cupcakes, saving the day.

Inspired by a news article in The Weekly Reader, my third grade teacher took time out of our school day to campaign very earnestly for the Democrats. Granted, it was 1984, and the Presidential election was coming up, and Walter Mondale had picked Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate. No one -- repeat, no one -- was excited about Walter Mondale, but a lot of women were very excited about Geraldine Ferraro, as was my third grade teacher. She made sure to impress upon all of us eight-year-olds how important this was that our parents vote for Geraldine Ferraro (and, I guess, the guy who was running for President with her). Honestly, I hope this teacher really enjoyed voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

I never did go to fifth grade, but I am assured that one of the fifth grade teachers would absolutely hit kids over the head with a banana if they misbehaved.

My sixth grade teacher (who loathed children and hated me in particular for being too smart and too Jewish) made us all write private diaries in class while she roamed around and read what we were writing over our shoulder. I retaliated by writing mine in German (which she had not said we couldn't do), so she moved my desk right up in front of hers so she could Keep An Eye On Me. When we read The Endless Steppe that year, she made a crack about how I ought to identify with dirty little Jewish girls shipped off to Siberia. I told my parents, and in response, my dad taught me every glorious 60s hippie insult to The Squares that he knew, and said they all applied to this teacher.

My seventh grade science teacher splashed out for a single can of caviar every year so he could feed it to us while we studied the life cycle of fish. He did this because he loved watching the faces that we made when we tasted the caviar. (It was awful -- very salty with a bitter aftertaste, totally not what you want to eat when you're thirteen.)

My high school choir director occasionally made me teach the class. No one minded, because I was a better musician than he was. I asked him to pay me for the labor, and he gave me a penny.

This was just the everyday stuff. My ninth grade Spanish teacher, who was an actual mafioso and had a serious feud going with one of the other Spanish teachers, is worth a whole post just to himself. All I will say of his class is that, during that year, I learned one phrase in Spanish -- de vez en cuando, from time to time -- and one phrase in Latin -- nolo contendere, I do not contest the charges.

[merakisphere]

This was probably my favourite 90s childhood object. Had me feeling like I was living in the year 3000 back in the day (1989). Every piece is hand-made, and shoppable on my Etsy Shop | Website ...Cool beans!!

[pargolettasworld]

As it happens, my first name happens to be from a genre that was popular around the time I was born (I was named after one of my grandmothers, but that style of name was just popular all around). The thing is that I use the "classic" English spelling, but there was another spelling that was also popular for some reason, so there are people who hear my name, look at my age, and then decide that I should go by this other spelling. (Then, of course, there are people who just get the name wrong entirely, since there are a couple of other names in the same genre that begin with the same letter that were popular at the same time, and they figure they have a one-in-three chance of getting it right if they just guess.)

The real problem starts when you get to my last name, which is Yiddish and for which my family uses a highly Americanized pronunciation. That name has seen some amazingly creative misspellings and mispronunciations. There are literally people who will listen to me introduce myself by first and last name, and then turn right around and mispronounce my last name even though they just heard me say it. It's like my last name induces brain farts or something.

Reblog to help find out how many of us share in the Struggle.

Feel free to elaborate on your name situation in the notes, should you care to do so!

(Companion poll about surnames coming soon.)

[cat-cosplay]

I was there for the fall of AOHell.

When Geocities faded.

When chat rooms were the thing.

The MySpace rush.

The rise and fall of flash.

Our modems screamed the song of digital freedom to my generation.

All things fade.

[toadminako]

While I love the Terror BTS photos as well, I'm lowkey obsessed with how millennial-coded Liam Garrigan's social media posts are

The earnestness punctuated with jokey sarcasm! The excessive use of emojis! He's just like me fr fr

On a semi-related note the second volume of the indie horror comic he's working on is so close to getting funded on kickstarter with only a few days to go so maybe consider throwing something their way if that interests you!

[brightlotusmoon]

All of it. I have done all of it.

[pargolettasworld]

He wasn't a good President, but he sure played one on TV.

[luke-and-leia-the-cats-not-jedi]

So everyone who was a kid in the 80s carried around a horrifying fever dream memory their whole life until realizing as an adult it was actually a scene from Return to Oz right?

[power-chords]

Losing my entire mind. He went Anne Rice on the OG MV shippers!

[sleepynegress]

OMG....

[pargolettasworld]

American, 80s kid. Not only were lockdowns at my grade school a concept so far in the future that no one at that school could possibly have imagined it, but my grade school was constructed in a way that would have made that kind of anti-shooting lockdown physically impossible.

In a holdover from the cheap-fuel-oil era of the 1960s, my grade school consisted of glass-walled pods in a lovely wooded setting. Each classroom had two-count-them-two whole entire walls made of glass. Fire drill, such as it was, consisted of going out the back door embedded in one of these glass walls and convening at a playground several yards away. No one involved in this school could possibly imagine someone coming there with an assault rifle -- and if someone had, we would all have been so exquisitely vulnerable that it would have been nearly impossible to lock down a pod.

The school does not look like that any more. It's been entirely rebuilt, in a more traditional, fortress-like style. This happened largely because the Hippie Sixties Pods were okay as long as heating oil was cheap and teachers didn't mind having to wrestle thirty seven-year-olds into coats and hats and mittens any time the class needed to leave the pod for a class in a different building, or for lunch each day, or for recess. But times changed, and the Hippie Sixties Pods are a piece of the past.

No matter how cheap heating fuel may get in the future, those pods won't be coming back for a looooooooong time. It's too dangerous to have kids in glass-walled pods now. The trees and the air and the shifting light were lovely, but only us Xennials remember them now.

Drop your age and country/state in the tags ☀️

This is probably super US centric but I’m still interested to see the results! Please don’t include weather drills in your response.

For those unaware, a lockdown drill is a drill schools will run to practice in the event of a danger to students and staff. This could be anything from a swarm of bees (happened at my elementary school) to an off-campus police presence or an active shooter event.

When I was in school we did lockdown drills only, the district I work in now does lockdowns and active shooter drills, but they’re conflated and the kids are taught to barricade during a lockdown when applicable.

[fellthemarvelous]

Just noticed you called yourself "Eldest Millennial."

Is that like, you consider yourself part of the crew or are you claiming the title? (Personally hope you've claimed the title after a Battle Royale with the other January '81 babies.)

Nah I can't claim the title because I was born in really early March of 1981 (I was born two weeks after my due date so clearly I wanted no part of any of this), but I've almost always been the oldest in all my friend groups.

I might change it to "geriatric millennial" just for funsies. ⏳

[tithsokphanny31]

What was your first movie in the movie theater?

[pargolettasworld]

One of my favorite shows between ages 7 and 9! (Or, really, upward. It's a great show, and just because it went off the air doesn't mean I stopped liking it.)

Dungeons & Dragons [1983-1985]

[daddysmusicblog]

Picture it, California summer 1989 six year old me goes belly side down head first. When i stand up I have second degree burns all over my belly. That was the day when Neosporin and Bactine fixed everything. Still have the scars but I lived.

[omarandjohnny]

I MISS THEM SO MUCH 😭💕