Last generation [Original posting on Saturday, Dec 27, 2008 | 12:23 PM (UTC)]

Posting in collaboration with Acrasmaritei Edi

Born in the early 70s to the late 80s we see now in year 2009 how our parent's houses are 50 times more expensive then the time they bought it back in the golden ages, and we realize that we will be paying for about 50 years or so for our houses. We don't have memories of the first steps on the moon or the brutal two World Wars but we have general knowledge since that meant something sometime.

We are the last generation who played "Hide 'n Seek", "Castle", "Ducks and Hunters", "Catchers", "Cops and robbers", the last who played "One, two, three at the wall", the last to use cabled phones but the first to give out recorded parties (used to rent a video and watch it for two days locked inside our houses), the first to see colored animations, the first to give up tapes for CDs.

We worn elastic jeans, jeans-pants, jeans-coats from the Turks and who used to have movies with Puma or Bruce Lee was the clan leader. We took General Knowledge exams and didn't have grill tests to get into a high school. We were the last "Falcons of our Country" and the last "Pioneers".
At kindergarten we learned poetry in Romanian and not English and we used to sing "Multi Ani Traiasca" and not "Happy Birthday" at anniversaries.
We were fascinated by "Isaura the slave", "90210 Beverly Hills", "Melrose Place", "Twin Peaks", "Dallas" and "Highlander" (not this stupid remake "The Immortal" with the worst actor copying "Duncan McLeod") and who is lying to not have watched is ether lying or didn't have TV. Foreign TV commercial used to drive us crazy like the "Magnum" ice-cream and we couldn't wait for it to pop-up in our stores, or those awesome water-guns (fancier and fancier).

Meanwhile as a consolation with "Tango" (vanilla and chocolate) and the all classic bottles filled with water from the hose, pored on our heads gave us pneumonia... now that was a good reason not to go to school.
We listened to "Metallica" and "Ace of Base", we listened to DJ Bobo and Michael Jackson, and "Backstreet Boys", "Take That" and there were no gypsy (so called) songs (manele that figuratively make me puke, a personal impression). The only game songs used to be like in a gathering, songs we learned from our grand-folks, songs at which we couldn't get the steps right but we all danced! Unlike the kids of today we heard of "Abba" and "Queens" (Freddy Mercury, died too young) and we heard all the new names like "50Cent" and Britney Trash, excuse me, Spears.

We read "Licurici", "Pif", "Ciresarii" and we drank "Cico" and "Zmeurata" and we thought that it was a wonderful thing when the "TEC" juice appeared without having to be concerned about "too many E-uri", and in school we all drank from the same bottle without fears of herpes or viruses. We are the last generation that cares about writing grammatically correct.

We drank Coca-Cola from the glassed-bottles and discovered Internet. We didn't beep each other, just whistled to call out the gang, we didn't have "Dolby Surround System", used to all shut up and keep it that way to not miss out on any of the film's actions. We didn't have "Nintendo" or "Playstation" but we played "Tetris" that bored the crap out of us in under a month after buying it (threw it inside somewhere and forgotten about it).

We couldn't wait for a party to play "Fantanita", "Flowers, girls and boys" or the best "Truth or Dare", anything that gave out a pretext to "mouth kiss" a girl we liked like liked. We are still the ones who asked first for the girl's friendship, the ones who blushed at the word "sex", the ones who flipped the coin to see who would go to buy condoms from the pharmacy so we can fill them up with water to throw from the balcony on unsuspecting people's heads walking by. We filled out "Oracles" in with we hoped the loved one would finally read how much we like her/him and how much we have in common.

It is amazing that we are still alive, because we were the last generation to ride a bicycle without any protection, we didn't have good seat-belts or special seats inside our parent's or relative's cars. We didn't throw away the candy we accidentally dropped on the floor. There were no special contraptions or ways to keep kids from opening bottles of dangerous substances, we didn't wash our hands after playing with all the muts and cats before eating. There was no care of how many fats the food contained and there was no "child proof the house". Parents sent us to buy drinks and cigarettes.

At the Revolution we heard the shootings, we witnessed three monetary changes, we laughed at jokes with "Bula" and we were definitely the first to hear Andreea Esca at PRO-TV saying "Bunaseara Romania. La multi Ani Romania!", we are the ones who remember all the early shows like "Beware of the donkey" and so on.

We are a generation of winners, of dreamers, the "first-timers"... and if you are reading this and fell into thinking just a bit, you are one of ours.