Well . . . here it is, folks. I turned 53 years-old at some point during the night and honestly don’t know where the time has gone. It seems like just yesterday I was a 22-year-old, snot-nosed second lieutenant, reading a map upside down while trying to find the box of grid squares my platoon sergeant assured me we absolutely needed. And yet, after all that time . . . truth is . . . I don’t feel a day over 73!
Between the knees, the shoulders, the back, the arthritis, and hearing issues—well . . . at least when my wife’s calling me—the experiences of the previous three decades have taken a physical toll. Psychological? Not so much, I think, as somewhere there’s a picture floating around of me wearing a protective mask while going door-to-door in the barracks attacking my classmates with a squirt gun. When you start from there . . . there’s only so much deeper a hole you can dig!
Yet when I look back on all those experiences, countless training exercises, physical fitness tests, mandatory education sessions, and “gentlemen’s courses” I realize they weren’t mine alone. Rather, each was a shared experience with others. And, nine times out of ten, it was those others that made each specific event fun . . . or at least bearable!
Those shared experiences are what form the basis of sometimes long-lasting relationships. And, of course, the more painful the experience, the deeper the bond. Those “this really sucks” moments somehow create a stronger glue than the more numerous day-to-day activities. The emotions evoked seem to somehow survive intact as a significant element of our memory.
Yet those bonding experiences aside, I re-learned this week that there are shared experiences that we all have, but rarely think about. You know what I’m talking about. Older folks can all remember where they were when Pearl Harbor was bombed, when they first heard man had walked on the moon, or learned President Kennedy had been assassinated. Folks from my generation no doubt recall what they were doing when the Challenger exploded just after launch or where we were when 9/11 happened. The events themselves left an imprint on our consciousness, both as individuals and as a generation, and elicit emotion years after the fact.
These incidents affected us, even if we didn’t know anyone directly involved primarily due to the media’s portrayal. We watched the shuttle explode live on TV after weeks of hype as a non-astronaut, teacher Christa McAuliffe, would be the first such passenger to make it into orbit. We sat glued to our seats in horror and confusion as first one and then another tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. And that before the all-invasive nature of today’s media seared things like COVID and the war in Ukraine into our memories!
But I was reminded this week that those shared, generational experiences aren’t limited to the most consequential moments of world history. Those incidents and accidents that haunt our subconscious and flavor our dreams for years on end. No, they can run to the mundane and often downright laughable as well.
“What am I talking about?” you ask. I was taking a walk in the park with my wife—because . . . you know . . . that’s what old people do—the two of us meandering in and out of super serious conversations about the nature of humanity intermixed with the complete silliness of 80s TV shows. My wife—who grew up in Korea—pulls out a mouse-eating reference to the sci-fi series “V the Final Battle” and I almost lost it. How is it, of all the possible things in this wide, wide world, that snippet of a childish TV show from 40 years ago has entered into the collective memory of a generation across such vastly different cultures?
And those of you who grew up in the 80s know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you? I don’t need to explain further. I was all of 12 years old when I watched that alien “visitor” pull the mouse out of the dumpster and swallow it whole . . . that scene haunted me for years afterward! All the more incredibly done without any kind of computer graphics!! It was a horrible scene that lived rent-free in my head for a long, long time. Yet the teenage version of my wife, growing up on the opposite side of the world, living under what was at the time a military dictatorship, had the exact . . . same . . . experience.
That’s crazy, right? That something so insignificant as what was probably nothing more than a filler scene in a TV series from 1984 could have such an impact. And that it would stick with us both long enough that a single, obtuse reference in 2025 could make those long-forgotten emotions and sense of wonder bubble to the surface like I’d seen it for the first time last night.
Of course, that topic led us to go through CHiPs (she grew up with the two motorcycle cops dubbed into Korean!), Knight Rider, McGyver, and any number of other 70s and 80s classic TV experiences. Most of which had some element that we both remembered in exactly the same way, having felt exactly the same thing while watching. Suddenly, the sense of shared experience—even though she and I wouldn’t meet for another decade—was as strong as if we’d watched them together. And I find that amazing.
When it’s all said and done, we share more in common with one another than we’ll ever be willing to admit. The shared experiences of each generation are virtually immutable now, so many years after the fact, but they bind together people who otherwise seem to have absolutely nothing in common. The health nut out for a run, the live action role player with the flashlight light saber, the introverted bookworm seeking solitude. These people may seem like polar opposites yet introduce the right generational cue and eyes light up as the memories flood in.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we humans are funny creatures. The same species which is able to forgive even serious offense is also capable of holding and passing on grudges for generations. That dichotomy keeps things interesting as we meet, evaluate, and engage with others each and every day. Yet when its all said and done, we all remember how we felt watching that wriggling tail disappear down that dude’s throat . . . and we feel like kids again . . . together . . . but separate.
Hope you all had—and can remember—a wonderful St. Patrick’s Day!
M. G. Haynes