A Road Less Travelled

Everyone’s heard of the generation gap, that gap between two people sitting in the very same room, but not all in the same place. I have heard of this occurrence; it seems to happen frequently even. But the only generation gap I’ve ever felt is the gap between me and everyone else in my generation.

There are exceptions, of course. There always are. But even the nice average Christian young person seems to run on a parallel track with no point of connection to my life. I’m not just talking about the mainstream ‘religion is a good thing in moderation’ people either. I’m talking about the solid, go-where-God-leads-me kind of Christian. The kind who’s pursuing all kinds of exciting opportunities at the nearest Bible college and making connections with unbelievers where they work. Or something along those lines.

I’ll admit that I’m blowing this out of proportion. The fact is that I usually get along just fine with these types of people. But there are more them than there are of me, and I tend to feel out of place. I can imagine, just to pick a random example, how it might at the Christmas party tonight.

I would hesitantly join a group of people my age. A few that I actually know a bit will smile and ask the usual introductory questions, but the soon the topic with turn to final exams. Final exams. I took a standardized test once–I think I was in third grade.

I will listen politely and muse upon my possible contributions to amusing conversation when the subject lags. I could regale them with the story of changing Margary’s diaper today. After discovering that the newly purchased clean diapers were all the way at other end of the house, and having already removed her soiled diaper, I’d had to make a mad dash while carrying the diaperless child. Somehow I suspect this would fail connect with them. (Since the readers of my blog are rather more likely to connect, I should probably tell you that it all went very smoothly. Yay!) I could tell them that I’ve had to clean up five dead rodents in recent memory. No, scratch that. Dead rodent stories don’t usually make good conversation starters in any polite circles. This will be the point when I start eying the nearby circle of moms who are twice my age, and decide to go share with them my excitement about getting a new dishwasher.

Phew… Oddly, I feel better after venting all of this. Perhaps because I just planned out my worst case scenario and it was really quite painless. Perhaps because I’ve now decided to avoid the ‘dead rodent story’ strategy and I always feel better when I have a plan beforehand. Or maybe it’s because the real people that I expect to be there aren’t actually as scary as the faceless entities implied in my scenario. Wait, hang on a second. Did I just say the real people my age aren’t actually all that scary? There’s obviously something wrong with me. Maybe I should go take my temperature…