I've got this wonderful email today from a friend of mine just about my age. It was actually a nostalgic spam dedicated to all of those that are part of our generation, Generation X, as they call it. It presents the generation of Romanian kids, born in the early 80's, which experienced both part of the Communism and post-communism era. Read bellow about the way we grew up.
I will translate that e-mail, because it touched me deeply. I'll try to be as accurate as possible, but even so there might be many words that I can't translate. Sorry for those that can't understand Romanian :(.
Born at the beginning of the 80's, we see that in the year 2006 the our parents' house is about 50 times more expensive compared to when they bought it, and we realize that we gonna pay for our houses about 50 years. We do not have memories of the first steps on the Moon, or bloody wars, but we know more about history and politics than our oldies believe, when they say we know nothing. We are the last generation that played hide and seek, castle, ducks and hunters, country-country we want soldiers, catch, poison bottle, pac pac, thieves and cops; the last that shouted "un, doi, trei la perete stai"; the last that used pay phones with coins; but the first that played video games (remember Mario?) and the first that saw color cartoons.
We wore elastic jeans, splayed pants, Turkish jeans jackets, and the ones that were wearing brands like Lee or Diesel used to be the heads of the gang. :) The boys used to write the name of the favorite football (soccer) player with tooth paste on their t-shirts, and the girls used to sew stars and hearts on their jeans. We didn't pass Capacity exam in the eight grade, we didn't have poll like exams and were the last of the Soimii Patriei during communism, wearing those incredibly bad color matched costumes. We have been taught in Romanian in kindergarten, not in English, and we sang "Multi ani traiasca" and not "Happy Birthday" at birthdays. We used to say "misto" and "fain" instead of "cool". We watched closely Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, Twin Peaks and Dallas... and who says they didn't either they lie, either they didn't have a TV. We used to watch cartoons on Italian TV channels, and hated that there were no subtitles so we could understand why Mila and Shiro had a fight. The commercials on the foreign TV channels were driving us crazy, and we were looking forward for the Magnum ice cream or those magnificent water pistols commercial to come up. Meanwhile we were comforting ourselves with vanilla+chocolate Tango and those old school tap water filled cans, that poured onto our heads were getting us with pneumonia. And there was the good reason to skip school.
We have listened to Metallica, and Ace of Base, and DJ Bobo, and Michael Jackson, and Backstreet Boys, and Take That, and never heard of "manele" (a Romanian stupid kind of music). The only round like dances being the ones at the weddings, where nobody knew the steps but everyone was dancing. We heard of Abba and Queen, and also about names like 50 Cent and Britney Spears, not like the kids today. If you ask them, the music started with Backstreet boys, but that's old school anyway.
We read magazines like "Licurici" and "Pif et Hercule" (which had this wonderful toys included), and drank Cico and TEC juices, without worrying about the E's, and also at school the hole class was drinking from the same bottle, without worrying about viruses.
We swore the hell out of the referee that cheated us on the game with Denmark, and we were the ones that sent him 10000 "sweet" mails. We didn't use to beep each other on cell phones, but we were whistleling to come out and play. We didn't have Dolby Surround, so we were shutting up to hear the movie action. We didn't have Nintendo or Playstation, but Tetris games and TV games that were starting to suck one month after we bought them, just so we would leave them in a closet to gather dust and forget about them.
We used to look forward at the parties to play "Fantanita", or "Flowers", "Girls and Boys", "Spinning Bottle", or Truth or Dare, or anything that would give us a reason to kiss the one we liked on the mouth. We were the ones that were still "asking for friendship" (ne ceream prietenia), the ones that used to blush when hearing the word SEX, the ones that were flipping a coin to pick the one about to go into the pharmacy to buy condoms so we could fill them up with water and throw them at eachother. We filled in "oracles", hoping that the person that we liked so much would read where was clearly written "Who do you like?".
It is amazing that we are still alive, as we never used helmets, kneecaps, or elbow caps when riding a bike, we didn't have special car seats as babies, we didn't throw in garbage cans the candies that accidentally fell on the street, we never had child proof medicines bottles, we didn't used to wash our hands after playing with all the homeless dogs and cats around the block, we didn't drink only bottled water, we used to slosh and dabble in the slops, and we never cared on how many proteins we ate one day.
We heard the gun shots at the Revolution in '89, we witnessed three bills and coins changes, we laughed at jokes with Bula and were the first that heard Andreea Esca presenting the news live on TV. We remember the "Feriti-va de magarus" (Watch out for the donkey) show.
We are a generation of winners, of dreamers, of first-timers...
If you are one of us... Congratulations!!!
