In which your humble narrator reflects with an uncharacteristic lack of sarcasm.
Count me out of the end-of-decade doom 'n' gloom being pushed hard by the media. I'm unsure where our intense, cultural need to engage in meaningless faux-retrospection at the end of a ten year period comes from, but it's taken a turn for the resolutely morose this time.
The list of complaints from the past decade is long: financial woe, Dick Cheney, Paris Hilton, Crocs, reality television, Ryan Seacrest, unnecessary war, housing bubble, Wall Street, Enron, assorted Kardashians, memoirs, W., et cetera, et cetera. I've run across the (particularly galling) phrase "end of innocence" a lot lately, usually pushed by boomer pundit types. If you'll forgive me for a moment, baby-boomers seems to be just a teensy bit obsessed with losing their innocence. You'd think it would be gone by now since they've proclaimed it lost every year since 1968. But I suppose when the twin foundations of your generational ethos are 1. incessant navel gazing and 2. buying stuff, you tend to stick pretty closely to familiar tropes.
But in an uncharacteristic spirit of optimism and (I hope) some perspective, I'd like to say that it just wasn't that bad of a decade. I got a college degree, turned 21, got married, ate lots of tasty things, had two marvelous children, turned 30, made progress on another degree, bought a condo, sold a condo, bought a house, read many interesting books, learned to play bridge, dressed better, traveled to interesting places and made many friends.
There was lots of crappy stuff too. I can't imagine a single friend or relative would ever accuse me of donning rose-colored glasses, but the relentless carping has gotten on my last damn nerve.
So if you're a nattering nabob of negativism, I'd like to cordially invite you to shut the hell up.
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