As soon as I hear this song by Nick Gilder, I’m immediately transported right back to cafeteria lunchtime at Cedarbrook Elementary in 1978 – as if Mork the Ork’s egg-shaped spaceship landed in my home. Ubiquitous red and white milk cartons lined the tables, plans were made for recess, and the sound of bartering a hot buttered roll for a Little Debbie was drowned out only by Kelly Oakes and I rearranging the lyrics and singing “Hot Chicken in the Oven.”

If you’re a member of Gen X, you know there’s a lot to feel nostalgic about. We were a generation raised on Chicken Pox parties, hose water, and neglect. The last generation of feral children who didn’t have safe spaces. Our parents locked us out of the house after morning cartoons and told us not to be home until the streetlights came on.

We have a unique perspective on life because we bridge the divide between the old world of analog and the new digital revolution. We’re the last generation to know how to use a rotary phone and the first to use online dating. We also remember a world where there were actual music videos on MTV.

Historically, we’re the least parented generation in history. Many of us were born during the divorce boom when both parents worked. We were latchkey legends who came home to empty houses and took care of ourselves.

Though it was frustrating in the moment, that experience of having to do darn near everything ourselves, built into us a self-determining spirit that made us human beings who were and are able to not only work well with others but who can function successfully without someone micro-managing our every move. Just let us go, and we’ll get the job done. We’ve been doing it all our lives.

Parental supervision was minimal. 911 wasn’t available in most towns. Older homes were coated in lead-based paint, and schools were covered in asbestos. Children ate unwrapped candy at Halloween, and television stations signed off their daily broadcast with the National Anthem and the American flag.

There were no mandatory car seats, but if you did have one, the purpose was more to restrain kids and keep them from moving about the car than trying to protect them in a crash. I climbed out the window of our station wagon when I was three and rode to the store holding onto the luggage rack. My mother never noticed and my older sister was praying I would fall off.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a seesaw or teeter-totter on a playground today, at least not the rusty, death traps I used to play on. And let’s not forget the swing sets of yesteryear. Loose chains and that one leg that always popped out of the ground and then landed with an ominous thud. I remember relying on the help of a tar mat to leap off onto the sharp gravel below.

Baby oil was often called “suntan lotion” and SPF 4 was considered more than adequate. Forget secondhand smoke. I remember kids running to the store to pick up a pack of cigarettes for their parents, often with a note of permission. Airplanes, movie theaters, grocery stores, cars—all of my memories of these spaces come with a thick haze of white smoke. Let's not forget that kids were also being primed for a future life of nicotine addiction with candy cigarettes and their all-too-realistic packaging. Thanks, Mimi and Papa.

And what about the time when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in mid-flight in January of 1986?  Many of us kids were watching that whole episode on TV from school when it happened in live time.  Because emotions were not discussed back in the day, teachers moved the class right along as if nothing happened.

Our parents didn’t know what was going on at school, and our teachers didn’t know what was going on at home.

We were told no, we were spanked, we didn’t receive participation trophies, and we waited all year for the seasonal Sears catalog to make our Christmas wish list which was full of choking hazards. When I stop and think about it, it’s a wonder I survived childhood with all 10 fingers and 10 toes.

We knew phones when they were connected to the wall by a curly wire. We were the answering machines before answering machines became a thing. Before call-waiting came on the scene and revolutionized telephone life, call-waiting meant “Wait till I get off this phone; then you can make your call.”

We are older than Google, our parents owned a set of Encyclopedia Brittanica, and we did school projects without help. We know a little bit about everything.

Gen X gets called the lost and forgotten generation, and The New York Times even thinks we’re a mess. But that hasn’t stopped us from being outspoken anyway. We are still out here fighting with the Boomers, raising the millennials, and putting a roof over Gen Z’s head.

Gen Xers are invested in the well-being of our globe, nation, city, state, and community. We listened to Smokey the Bear, cried with the Indian on the anti-pollution campaign, sang Conjunction Junction with Schoolhouse Rock, and learned how to count to 10 in Spanish thanks to Sesame Street. We still recognize the importance of connection and community, and of the saying “I am because we are; and because we are, therefore I am.”

We carry with us that healthy respect for others while also maintaining that healthy sense of questioning and distrusting authority. Our “outsider” view allows us to see all angles to issues, not just our own.

But it’s become clear to me that if this nation has any chance of survival, of carrying its traditions deep into the 21st century, it will in no small part depend on members of my generation. The last Americans schooled in the old manner, the last Americans that know how to fold a newspaper, write in cursive, take a joke, and listen to a dirty story without losing their minds.

We had to adapt to the Boomers when we first arrived, and now we’re being asked to adapt to the millennials and Gen Z. We have to be multilingual generationally because no one else speaks our exact language. The good news is that this gives us a unique positioning to succeed alongside the two very large generations that we’re sandwiched between. We are natural translators and remixers—and we make the most of what we have.

We are the link, the super glue, the spandex that holds the whole thing together; the folk both the Boomers and Millennials can come and talk to when they need an ear, when they need advice, when they need help, or when they need to feel needed.

So I say to my fellow Gen Xers, let the world continue to forget that we exist.  We are used to being forgotten, overlooked, and underestimated. And we like it that way.

Gen X, the Forgotten Middle Child. Is it any wonder that our theme song was "Don't You Forget About Me?" Don't worry, the irony is we just don't care all that much. We speak all the languages of all generations. So to effectively sum up in a word what it was like to grow up Gen X? Whatever.