Bridging the Gap

There's a tired old axiom that goes something like: “If you hold onto something long enough, sure enough, it will come back in style.”

I think, in ways, it has never been more true. As each decade defines itself, the new millennium has enrobed itself with the idea that not only should our clothes look like clothes from another era, but they should like they were actually from that era, articles lost for decades and found again in dusty, old trunks or in neighborhood yard sales. Brand new clothing comes complete with faded logos, holes, and thread-bare seams. I should know, I own a handful of choice of examples.

But it's not just our fashion. Ford's success with its retro-inspired Mustang GT has coaxed other car-makers into taking their own – less inspired – stabs of bringing back the hard, angular lines of pre-90s automobiles. Coca-Cola, after years of jazzing up their white swash, has gone back to a design so stark and bereft of fanfare that it seems as if something is missing. I wonder what the younger generation makes of these throwbacks to classics? While I may remember when Coke was just a red-and-white can, do middle school students plunking change into the campus soda machine look at it with such recognition? Will these kids, when they grow up, remember fondly the vibrant two-color design as a relic of their own generation, completely unaware of its far-reaching beginnings?

And now with franchises like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers making resounding comebacks, the memories of each generation is becoming more and more entwined. Men and women approaching their 30s are remembering the same things, in slightly different forms perhaps, that their children will in a decade or so.

The other day, I walked into a coffee shop to order an iced tea. The eighteen-something barista, sporting a stud in her nose, was having a conversation with a thirty-something man, dressed in business attire, and an old lady, wearing the requisite white 'fro hairdo that one has come to expect. Each of them were textbook examples of their generations. But they were all talking together about a subject that, if we were to heed the demographic, applied to none of them. What would J.K Rowling do now, that Harry Potter was done?

This encounter concreted something I have contemplated for a while. I think we are seeing a bridge in the gap. Parents befuddled by their children's videogames are being replaced by parents who grew up playing those videgames. Grandpa is picking up a Wii-mote. Grandma (like the lady in the previous example) is tapping away on her wi-fi enabled notebook. Kids and grownups a like are remembering fondly childhood icons again and again.

Me? I reach past orderly armies of red and white labels to get my soda: A Barq's bottle that has hardly changed in 50 years.