Do you have kids? No? Don’t worry, I have way too many and I’m here to tell you about them so you can pretend you’re still young and relevant!
Today’s lesson is How To Talk Like Kids Talk. My 14 year old and his friends don’t have conversations. They don’t know a single thing about one another’s lives, hopes, dreams, or families. Instead, they ask questions that I assume they find on the internet. Is the Tooth Fairy a psychopath? Were the Norse gods stronger than the Greek one? In a battle between Homelander and Iron Man, who would win? (They get this answer entirely wrong, BTW.)
What’s surprising to me, a Gen-Xer, is how much they know about pop culture of the past. Waiting for the camp bus this morning, in lieu of conversation my son asked me this: If you could bring one musician back from the dead for 10 years, who would it be? “Why only 10 years?” I asked, because I am uncool and missing the point. “What happens to them at the end of 10 years?” This was met with only a withering stare. So I moved on.
“Mozart,” I said, and waited to be mocked. Instead, he was all “Yes! That was my first answer, but most people are saying Michael Jackson.” Most people? He was only a year old when MJ died, why are most people he knows talking about Michael Jackson? I don’t know where he’s getting this, but I’m gonna assume Reddit. I make a mental note to check his browser history.
That answer makes no sense, obviously. Michael Jackson had his entire career. He didn’t leave anything unfinished. My kid agrees, and posits that people actually just want MJ back so they can prove he “didn’t do all those things.” Hmm. Hard to know how much detail to go into here, since I have no clue what he knows about Jackson’s life. “Michael Jackson did do all those things,” I point out, vaguely. Kid nods knowingly.
Lots of people also choose rappers, he tells me. I’m like, which ones? He says he doesn’t know because he can’t listen to rap since we have the Spotify account set to block anything rated E and that includes most rap songs. I am astonished to hear this, mostly because I didn’t know Spotify even had parental controls or that I’d ever turned them on, but also because blocking most rap is probably a symptom of systemic racism, or perhaps a byproduct of it? We discuss that. I, an Old White Woman, admit that I was always turned off by what I saw as the outrageous misogyny of rap when I was younger. He agrees that yes, it’s mostly “old people rap” that seems sexist and that yes, I am out of touch with current rap. How does he know this if Spotify won’t let him listen to any rap? He snorts at my stupidity.
Moving on again, I tell him us old people would usually answer that question with hackneyed replies about rock stars who died too young–your Buddy Holly, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain replies. He wants to know why so many died young. We get to talk about drug abuse! Hard living, it’s bad, don’t do it! We talk about mental health and suicidal ideation. Also that famous people shouldn’t get into small aircraft, but that’s a less useful life lesson so I skim over it.
I’m surprised John Lennon isn’t the top answer. He appears to know less about Lennon than about Michael Jackson, which I’m not sure what to do with. We talk about Lennon’s murder, but also about the fact that I don’t think solo Lennon was anywhere near as good as Beatles Lennon. (Fight me, I don’t care. I also think he seemed like an asshole and a crappy father.)
Speaking of crappy fathers, I find myself telling him about Tim Buckley and realizing that my answer would be Jeff Buckley, who was young and left so much unfinished. Besides, I can brag about having seen him in New York before anyone knew who he was. The kid has never heard of Jeff Buckley, but does know instantly what I mean when I say “Hallelujah.” “Oh, that famous cover?” he asks. Friends, I’m incredibly happy that he knows it’s a cover.
Right as the bus comes, he tells me that his final answer was Louis Armstrong. I am left to wonder what, and how, he knows about Louis Armstrong.
The point is this: Gen Z knows about all kinds of things that we didn’t know at their age, because their world is as huge and varied as the internet itself. That’s incredibly dangerous, of course, but it also makes this generation of digital natives hard to generalize. We were shaped by the culture of our time. They aren’t, they can dip in and out of the past at will. It’s amazing, because you can talk to them about pretty much anything! Just remember to Jeopardy that shit.
