At the Carrot Ranch today, I find Irene Waters talking about different generations and musing about their different experiences with high school graduation.

Here are the generations she presumes might be blogging:

Greatest Generation

G I Generation: 1901 – 1924 Experienced WWII in adulthood.

Silent Generation 1925 – 1945 Experience WWII in childhood

Baby Boomers

Boom Generation/Hippie 1946 -1964 Space Exploration/ first counter culture

Generation X 

Baby Busters 1965 -1980 Experienced Vietnam War/Cold War

MTV or Boomerang Generation 1975 – 1985 Rise of Mass Media/end cold war

Generation Y

Echo Boom/Generation McGuire 1978-1990 Rise of the Information Age/ Internet/War on Terror/Rising Gas and Food Prices

Generation Z

New Silent Generation 1995- 2009 Never experience pre Internet/dot com bubble/ Digital globalisation

Generation Alpha

No sub name as yet but possibly the school or materialistic generation 2010 – These are predicted to study longer and be more concerned with material possessions.

I fall into the Baby Busters category, and I graduated in the small town of Mount Vernon, Indiana, USA.

Graduation was a pretty big deal for me, because I made a short speech.

During my senior year, one of my best friends was our exchange student from Brazil.

I wanted to speak at the ceremony in his language (Portuguese), so he took great pains to rehearse me in saying what I wanted to say, which was this:

“We would like to thank you for all that you have taught us.”

In Portuguese, this was a long, alliterative mouthful, but when the big day rolled around, I guess I did a decent job of it. At least according to my friend Rogerio Zuim, who has gone on to live in Germany I believe, working on photovoltaic cells or some such.

Other memorable moments of my graduation included a freaky friend wearing nothing under the gown, a redneck buddy showing me that he had a dip in his mouth, and me frisbee-ing my mortarboard cap (complete with honors tassle) so high and so far, when the ceremony came to the ‘huzzah’ part, that it was lost to me forevermore.

So yeah – for me, high school graduation was fun. I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats. Ok, so I did not cry. But it was better than Cats. Except the Macavity part. That was rad.

Thanks, Irene, for taking me back.