“David! New Kids are on tour!”
Blank stare.
”You know, The New Kids on the Block.”
Slow head shake.
I’m pretty sure my jaw dropped as I started googling and educating him on the heartthrobs of every little girl in the early 90s.
This happens a lot. Mostly with music, but other things too.
Movies, actors, toys, games.
I reminisce about when the very first Mario Brothers and Nintendo came out, and he wonders if I remember the Nintendo 64. I had to Google the 64 because I was already past gaming systems by the time he was getting into them.
He will sing the song Pretty Woman to me but has no idea who Julia Roberts or Richard Gere are.
When you have an age difference as large as ours, this is bound to come up over and over again. I used to let it worry me at the beginning of our relationship. I worried that we wouldn’t have enough in common.
There’s something that just feels good when you are talking to someone, and they understand every reference you make. The joint familiarity. Coming together over topics, through times you both experienced, at the same time.
What I have found instead is that even though we both have to explain a lot of things to each other, it’s through that explaining that we bond and learn from each other. Sometimes it’s silly things like what ‘yeet’ or ‘lit’ means, and when I should or shouldn’t say them. And sometimes it’s gaining perspective on a group of people born more than a decade later than me.
My generation was the last generation to experience life without the internet, to live our teenage lives without cell phones, to listen to music on actual cassette tapes, among other things. We used libraries and encyclopedias when we wanted to research something. When we got hold of the internet, we went wild, at least I did. I believe the most impressive Google kings and queens probably come from my time.
His generation has had the world at its fingertips for as long as they can remember. They never had to learn to talk on the phone because they could send a text. They didn’t have to wait and see if their friends were going to show up because they could call or text their cell phone to see where they were. They didn’t have to spend hours in front of the radio waiting for their favorite song to play so they could try to record it; they downloaded it.
In some ways, it’s like we have different social rules. We relate to people differently; we interpret things differently; therefore, we understand things differently.
One of my first memories of this was when David had to explain Instagram to me. I knew how to use it and the overall point; I mean, come on, I have Google skills. You post pictures, you get likes, and you give likes. What Google didn’t tell me was that there was a whole other side to Instagram, and you had to be careful.
I would scroll through my feed, and if I thought a photo was interesting or even just wanted to support someone’s effort in trying, I would double-tap and move on. This is what you’re supposed to do, right? Well, maybe, but apparently, if you are a female and you like a male’s photo, it is sometimes interpreted as equivalent to a wink or something.
It goes something like this: you like a photo; not long after that, the same person likes one of your photos; next thing you know, they follow you. When you follow them back, you can almost always expect a private message to follow soon. I had no idea this “like game” existed or that I was an unknowing participant until David explained it to me. It’s a completely different culture. So, word of advice to my fellow 30-somethings: if you like a 20-something’s photo, you may be sending an unintended message.
We have been together for a little over 2 years now. In that time, I have stopped worrying about our differences and have started embracing them as learning spaces.
We never talk down to each other or make fun of each other when these things come up. We have always had mutual respect for each other. It has allowed us to explain things to each other and appreciate when the other does the same. By doing this, I feel like we are adding to each other’s collective knowledge of the world. We are expanding each other’s perspectives on people and situations. I call it closing the gap. Each time he tells me something new, I feel like that space of time between us grows a little narrower.
I don’t know if knowing all of The New Kids on the Block’s names will ever do anything more than give him a leg up in trivia, but it made me happy to tell him about it and gave me one more thing to look forward to in our marriage. We will never run out of things to talk about.
Written 4.14.19
