Generation gap imaginings ~ May 10, 1984

David Heiller

WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL, we used to talk about the “generation gap” a lot. The generation gap was some sort of chasm that separated kids from adults, ranging from different values to different styles of clothing.

Noah opens the cabinet door
 to begin his selections for the 
mornings' radio station.

If your father didn’t like the length of your hair and told you so, this was the generation gap. If you believed in free speech to the point of certain four letter words, and your mother disagreed with a bar of soap in hand, you were victims of the generation gap. If you protested the war in Vietnam and your neighbor fought there, the generation gap was taking its toll.

I never put much stock in the so-called generation gap. I always thought it was just a phrase, an easy way to express something that is very complex. It was a cliché, because it was used too much.

But now the generation gap is back on my mind, in the form of my 11-month-old son. It started last Saturday morning. I was in the kitchen, washing dishes. Noah was in the living room, playing. I could hear him there, babbling, humming, and making baby noises. The radio was tuned to KAXE, a public radio station in Grand Rapids, playing children’s music.

I heard Noah crawl across the floor, his knees going bump, bump, bump, in rhythm of his excited breathing hmm, hmm, hmm. This means he has found something exciting. I heard him open the cabinet doors to the stereo. This is forbidden territory—that’s exciting enough. I was up to my elbows in soap suds, so I listened, as Noah’s hand found the tuning knob on the stereo receiver.

The generation gap begins here.

He turned the station from the kids’ music down to some classical selection on Minnesota Public Radio. It was nice violin music. Noah hesitated for a few seconds, then went back up the dial, past KAXE, till the music of Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias came forth, loud and clear. I heard Noah plop down, and go bump, bump, bump back to his playing. He was content with “For All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” on some soft rock Duluth radio station.

I know, Noah is only 11 months old. It was just an accident that he chose Willie and Julio over Mahler and Burl Ives. This generation gap nonsense is just a part of a young father’s fear, imaginings of a spirit that isn’t even there.

Isn’t it?