Jonesing about

Late last year, I wrote a post on my delight in being part of generation no-name, in that I am too young to be a B-Boomer, and too old to be an X-er. Someone wrote a comment in response, telling me that I was wrong wrong wrong ... because my generation does indeed have a label, and it seems that I am part of a cultural steamroller coming soon to a media outlet near you.

Apparently I, along with millions of other early 1960s babies, am part of Generation Jones. 

Suddenly the Jones label is popping up everywhere. We even have our own website, which states that we're on the up and up, as the 'number one trend of 2009'; here I was thinking that the number one trend for 2009 would have been ankle boots or media identities behaving extra-badly or the GEC. The idea gets more of a go at this British communication site complete with pictures of Maggie Thatcher, and at Jonathan Pontell's site, there's even graphs to explain what we're about. (Pontell is the chap who coined the term Generation Jones, for people born between 1954 to 1965.)

Then there's the piece yesterday's Sunday Age, which boldly claims that we are the 'lost generation that's found its voice'. Makes me wonder about all of those pre-Baby Boomer generations, going back centuries. What snappy label did the generation of people born between 1765 and 1790 go by?

Does this mean that the delightfully silly Channel Ten gameshow 'Talkin Bout My Generation' needs to get itself a new panel member and guest each week, now we Joneses finally have found our voice? By rights they need to move 47-year-old Amanda Keller into heading up the Jones team, and find a real Baby Boomer to take the reigns to answer questions about Gidget. 

When I read The Age article yesterday, I did find its focus on a raucous 40-something wedding a bit odd. But then I remembered (through a rather fuzzy head) that I'd been at a very raucous event myself the previous night - our primary school Trivia Night Fundraiser. It was full of Gen-Jones types dressed up in their going-out clothes, drinking buckets of red wine, shouting, playing games, dancing to My Sharona, and squealing in delight as we managed to name four characters from F-Troop correctly. 

Yep, partying like it was 1989!