Some Notes on a Pandemic

Anyone who was a latchkey child growing up in the 80s (which was pretty much all of us) can tell you some stories about the the heavy anti-drug messaging that saturated the airwaves every weekday afternoon. No sooner would you let yourself into an empty house, pour yourself a mixing bowl full of Cookie Crisp cereal and turn on the television then you would be bombarded with Scott Baio, Drew Barrymore, Corey Feldman and Tatum O’Neal all exhorting you to “Just Say No.” (Ironically, it turned out that many of those actors were merely trying to make sure there would be enough drugs left for themselves.)

This was some serious low-quality edutainement, and after school specials like “The Boy Who Drank Too Much” and PSAs like “This is your brain on drugs” became as much a part of our 80s collective memory as the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises ever did. But perhaps no message is better or more fondly remembered then the 1987 PSA where a teenage boy, confronted by his father holding his weed stash out to him and demanding to know, “Where did you learn this stuff? Who taught you to do this?” sullenly snaps back, “I learned it from watching you, okay? I learned it from you!”

I’ve been thinking of this PSA a lot this week as the internet, ever ready to point its bony finger of shame at someone, has unleashed its full fury and scorn at the college students merrily partying away on the beaches of Florida (at least until they were closed down).

“How could you?” the internet demanded, holding out photographic evidence of girls in bikinis riding on boys’ shoulders while their friends all took turns drinking out of the same beer bong. “Think about your grandparents!” the internet pleaded. And then the internet wondered how all those Gen Zers got to be so collectively callous. Right before the internet sat on its couch and started flipping through its extensive collection of “participation trophy” memes.

Here’s the thing: I’m not Gen Z or a Millennial, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand the frustration being experienced by these generations. Frustrations that sometimes manifest as a seeming complete lack of empathy for the generations that came before them. You think their “Ok, Bye Boomer,” jokes about the pandemic are callous? How do you think they felt about all of your “avocado toast” jokes when they told you they were drowning in student debt, medical debt, housing insecurity, and all the anxiety that accompanies those things? You told them they didn’t deserve a living wage, and now you can’t understand why they might feel as if you don’t deserve to live. And before you say, hang on, I never said anything like that: every vote you made, or didn’t make, told them all that and more.

The shocker isn’t that there are members of the younger generations who don’t seem to care about what happens to their elders—it’s that there are any who do. Remember, this is the generation who watched their classmates die by gun violence and were met with a collective shrug, who marched in the streets over climate change and were told they needed to “work on their anger management issues.” Why can’t you stay home and take this seriously? I don’t know, Dad, why can’t you ever remember to bring your canvas shopping bags to the grocery store?

So maybe the next time you, and the internet, are beside yourselves staring aghast at a picture of college kids partying on the beach during a pandemic, or feel sickened by a “Boomer Remover” thread you heard about on reddit, don’t bother with asking them “Where did you learn this stuff? Who taught you to do this?” Because the answer, as you very well remember, is “I learned it from watching you, okay? I learned it from you.”