Take a Cup o' Unkindness Now

Hello. Welcome to the Weekend Gene Pool, which has just eclipsed The National Human Genome Research Institute as the most famous gene pool in the world. As always, we will be asking you for your personal anecdotes and experiences, in exchange for promising to entertain you.

Today’s question comes from a reader. April Musser, a fire prevention expert from Georgia, writes:

“Reading my social media feed, I saw a post that started something like "Is anyone else sick of the stanley cup rage? My kids are mad I won't give in because all their friends..." I turned to my husband (who was reading over my shoulder) and said, "I thought NHL playoffs were in late spring. Why the Stanley Cup rage now?"

“He burst out laughing and told me to keep reading the post, where it soon became clear that we were talking about a Stanley® stainless-steel tumbler that is apparently all the rage, a craze among people younger than I am. It’s evidently TikTok driven. Parents and young adults are camping out at Target™ for those things! It made me wonder: What was your moment you realized you were totally out of touch with whatever it is that younger, hipper people are doing and caring about these days?”

Indeed, that’s today’s topic: What was the first moment (or any moment) you realized you were out of touch with whatever it is that younger, hipper people were doing? How did you feel about it? Poignant is good; exasperated is better; funny is best.

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I have a lifetime of such feelings because I am older than a trilobite fossil. I remember that after I first bought a computer, my brother was on the phone from California trying to get me remotely familiar with the durn thing; I was complaining about everything, including that there were extraneous “periods” all over, in inappropriate, inexplicable places. “What’s that all about? Is this thing broken?”

Silence. More silence. Finally, gently: “They’re called ‘dots’. They are part of addresses.” “Addresses?” “Never mind. There’s nothing wrong with your computer.” My brother is six years older than I am.

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Many years ago, Dave Barry, Tom the Butcher and I were planning yet another Post Hunt, an annual event that was a vast, elaborate puzzle for readers that played out on the streets of D.C. Thousands of people swarmed to it. At one point, one of us came up with what we hoped would be the heart of a great puzzle: People would arrive at a street corner to find an odd, enormous sculpture of two of these:

In the sculpture, the things would be on their backs, legs in the air. No other hint. The people would have to figure out it meant “two dead beetles,” and switch that in their minds to “two dead Beatles,” which would give them the names “John” and “George,” which would in turn lead them to another realization, which would deliver the answer to the puzzle. Simple. All they needed was “John” and “George.”

One of us wondered aloud whether younger people might not know enough about the Beatles to know who the two dead ones were. Then we all laughed this concern off, amused by our caution. Of course everyone of all ages would know — these were the Beatles, the most famous band ever, international icons, bigger than Jesus, and so forth. But then, just to be really cautious, we did a poll of many people.

It turns out more than half of those under 40 had no idea which Beatles were dead, or even that any were dead. Many didn’t even know all four names. And a remarkable percentage — maybe ten percent, the youngest slice of adults — weren’t entirely aware of who the Beatles were. (FYI: Of the three of us, Tom is the baby. Currently, he is 69.)

We abandoned the puzzle, soaked in our shame of not knowing anything about anything.

And now, unaccustomed as it is to its last-place position here, the Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Please send your observations / anecdotes here to this cantaloupe-colored button. I will address them, lavishly, next week.

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