Recently I have had several conversations which revolve around what used to be conceptually called Generation Y. In more recent years, anyone born much after 1982 has been lumped into a large group called the Millennial Generation. It is a funny thing though, many of my friends and I seem to be clinging to our roots as Generation Y. We see ourselves as a completely different entity which came between Generation X and the current generation. Over the past few days, I have been ruminating about why we are so insistent that we are our own entity.

I was born in 1983. I have an older sister, eight cousins on my father’s side of the family and two on my mother’s. On my father’s side, six of these cousins are older than I am. The other two are only slightly younger. My sister was born in 1980, leaving her on the razors edge which separates the generational gap. I spent my entire life surrounded by Gen X. They exposed me to their world, and though I was young, it had a profound effect on me. My identity was molded in many ways by these cousins and their friends.

There is so much more to being Generation Y than simple proximity to Gen X. I grew up in a world that was very different from that of the Millennial generation. I am not very good with computers. I learned to type on an Apple 2e, a beast of a machine which required I load the word processing program off of an eight inch floppy disk. Its only display color was a flickering green which haunted my dreams when I had a big project due. I had to feed the printer each individual sheet of paper, one at a time.The internet did not exist as we know it today. It wasn’t until junior high that I remember being told I had to type in “http://www.”; before every single web address. Search engines were far off in the future.�� I thought the net was a fad.

The world changed in a massive way in late 1991 when the USSR fell. I was eight years old and I remember feeling a sense of relief, knowing that the looming threat of war with the Soviets was over. Not long after its announcement on television, my family and I were in a Costco where they were selling bottles of Stolichnaya marked “Product of the USSR.” My parents purchased one. It sits in a cabinet still unopened to this day. Every time I look at that bottle, I flashback to the Cold War.

I grew up watching The Simpsons,��which launched its first season in 1990. I remember the conservatives of the time attacking the show for being inappropriate for young viewers. I never really understood the controversy, as I didn’t understand the innuendo and euphemisms laced within the show. As an adult, I love going back and re-watching the first eight seasons and being amazed at what the FCC let them get away with.

We were alive for The Gulf War (which lasted less than a year). I watched the news in second grade when “Stormin” Norman Schwarzkopf led his forces in a war that lasted just a bit longer than a blink of the eye. So we watched Bush Sr. battle Saddam Hussein.

We lived in peace time, with a few small hiccups.

Generation Y listened to Korn, Slipknot and Eminem. Blink-182 and The Offspring were our punk. Nu Metal was our jam and as much as we hate to admit it, most of us have heard “Nookie” by Limp Bizkit more times than we should have. Some people think Rob Zombie is creepy, but for us, he is our Astro Creep and we will follow him with The Devil’s Rejects through the House of 1000 Corpses. Eve 6 and the New Radicals were easy listening. On my way to the comic shop on Wednesdays, “Dig” by Mudvayne and “The Way You Like It” by Adema blasted out of the stereo in my friends truck (which had a sticker on the back touting, “Life’s a Beach).

We were alive when Image Comics was formed. When nothing was cooler than Youngblood��and��Spawn. Generation Y watched Superman die at the hands of Doomsday (we were already jaded enough to know it was a publicity stunt). We even watched an industry almost die at the hands of speculators. I had cut an article out of the LA Times about Marvel filing for Chapter 11 and taped it to my bedroom door. At the time, I wasn’t sure what it meant for the world of comics, but I knew it was important. That article stayed taped to my door for a decade.

We know that the only good Star Wars films were episodes four through six. Episodes one through three sucked. We hope that “The Force Awakens” will be good, but we aren’t holding our breaths.

Generation Y has long been aware of the racial divide in this country. We witnessed the beating of Rodney King in 1992. This type of footage was rare at the time because it actually required a bystander to have a camcorder and not a cell phone (which were about the size of a brick at the time). We watched on the television as LA erupted into a week of riots. On the first day of rioting, Gen Y saw Reginald Denny pulled from his truck and beaten within an inch of his life by The LA Four.

We watched a white Ford Bronco prove that a slow speed chase is just as effective as a high speed one. If you don’t get this reference, you aren’t Gen Y

We saw Bush lose to Clinton. We watched Dole grip his pencil tightly in his hand and speak about himself in the third person. Ross Perot melted down right before our very eyes.�� We saw Clinton muse about the definition of the word, “is”. On Saturday Night Live, Phil Hartman crammed his face full of McDonald’s, pointing out our President’s love for fast food (he is vegan now).

In 2000, some of us even got the chance to vote in a presidential election for the first time. I missed the cut off. What I didn’t miss was the first time since 1888 that a man became the president while losing the popular vote. I also learned about chads (and that doesn’t refer to the guy who sat behind me in English class).

I graduated high school in 2001. Just before I entered college, two planes flew into The World Trade Towers and one into the Pentagon. I was 18 years old. Some of the people in my graduating class went to college and some went to war. I lived through my undergraduate work while politicians talked about instituting the draft. I wondered, if it came to pass which of us would be the first to be chosen to go to war. Would it be me?

One day, I turned on the television to find that our troops had shifted gears from searching for Bin Laden to fighting Saddam Hussein (wait, Bush vs. Hussein, haven’t we lived this life before?).

I suppose what I am saying is that what separates Gen Y from the Millennials is the changes we have seen in the world. We have seen so much of what is going on right now happen before. Generation Y lives in a perpetual state of Deja Vu. We even stand to watch another presidential race between Bush and Clinton this year. The only difference is we don’t have to keep a quarter in our shoes to call home anymore.