Maybe there really is hope.

Born on the cusp, I don't identify with the Baby Boomers or Generation X. I often see the baby boom generation defined as those born between 1945 and 1965, and I was born in 1961, but I was too young for Vietnam, too young for the 60s. My babysitters were hippies, not me. I think of Generation X as the Janeane Garafolo generation, I guess because she was in Reality Bites which was such a zeitgeist movie, and I always thought, still think, a lot of those actors and other artists are very cool -- Garafolo and Ethan Hawke, Richard Linklater, and even the so-called brat pack Breakfast Club crowd. But in the end, they're my little sister's generation, not mine.

I even see a distinction between me and my friends who were born only 2 or 3 years later, because they grew up with Sesame Street and Schoolhouse Rock, which I just missed. I had Captain Kangaroo. Another major dividing line is HIV. I was 22 when the virus was discovered, so I sowed my wild oats (and those were some wild oats) at the extreme tail end of the age of sexual freedom. People just a couple years younger than me began their sexual lives in a very different world, and people a few years older than likely were done with their experimental years. For those of us born in the very early 60s, the iron fist of safe sex came down smack in the middle of our party.

So I'm declaring myself an honorary Millenial. (Can one declare oneself an honorary member of something? I guess not. I'll ask my classmates today.)