1969

Ageism launched the year we were born—literally. That was the year they
dispatched us and a supercharged word into a no-so-straight-arrowed 
world. Who knew we would be accompanied by others, bonytongued 
innuendo, like chronobiology, blind trust, break point, marginalized, 
and decriminalized? And then, there’s the actual history: “To Be Young, 

Gifted & Black” premiered in NYC, while James Earl Ray finally plead guilty 
to the murder of MLK. The Viet Nam war was nuked with blazing protests,  
gay rights made a dissidentital entrance at The Stonewall Rebellion, and that’s 
the tip of the iceberg. Birth control pills came legally into the country, while 
Manson, Woodstock, and Nixon fought over every front page. This is what we

were bottle fed in infancy, while Merriam Webster addendumed the dictionary 
with expression after idiom, headhunting new vocabulary to define a radical 
age. How many articulate others learned early the jawboning progression of 
rip-off, high tech, superconglomerate, sexual harassment, confidentiality agreement, 
microchip, and fuzzy logic? Yet it’s odd—at this marginalized Gen X juncture, 

we’re apparently old and unknowledgeable. Or perhaps we all have a mood disorder.
I suppose we could power forward, get our lives together. Practice passive restraint.
Maybe hire a life coach. Or vinify a garden of disinterested greenery. Yech. Thanks 
but no thanks—not a parton of interest. We’d prefer to punctuate the market with
zappy brown outs and revolution. Better watch your step. We first walked the moon.  

Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt, copyright April 2, 2024, all rights reserved 

Author's note: Sources are here and here. And yes, I took creative license with some words. If Merriam can do it, so can I.