Smells Like Teen (Dis)Spirit

On my train ride into work this morning I read an article that made me a little upset: less that 1/3 of American adolescents (teens and college kids) will find work for the summer. According to the Boston Metro the main culprit is the economic slump (did someone say recession?) we are finding ourselves in. I know there are 10000 other things that might be more upsetting about the current state of our economic affairs, but for some reason it made me really sad as I began to ponder how comparatively easy my own adolescence of a few years ago felt in comparison.

I was lucky to be a child of the nineties: neon-colored, Vanilla-Ice-forsaking, bubble-gum pop, Achy-Breaky-Baby-One-More-Time, I love the 90s, nineties. Bill Clinton was president for the decade and while you can debate his policies (personal or private) you can't really deny that money was flowing and gas prices were below $2. Even the early 2000s when I was a teenager were pretty good, despite 911 and the hanging chad fiasco. When I got my license gas was $1.25 a gallon and I drove a Jeep with impunity to my first job at Filenes (no longer in existence) as an inventory analyst. That was just a fancy name for a kid who was paid $100 for a week of counting inventory, a very fun and relaxing job, honestly. We worked from 6am to 12pm, and it was fun to be in the store before anyone else in the morning with nothing but the department store soundtrack and cashmere sweaters for company. On my next school vacation I walked into my local Bickfords restaurant (also no longer in business) and got a job as a hostess. Easy as pie. And when I was sick of truckers trying to pinch my ass and old people shouting for more coffee I left and got a job at a chain Italian restaurant where I stayed for four lovely summer vacations.

The thing is that I never worried about where my next job would be, or if I could get one. I left one job and had months and months break before I sauntered into the next one and politely asked for employment. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to get a job, and as far as I could tell none of my friends ever experienced the fear of adolescent unemployment. Retail or restaurant jobs grew on trees, and only in one very rare - and lazy - case did I have a friend who had to resort to selling those super sharp kitchen knives door to door as a way to make a few bucks (and that lasted about a week). I didn't worry about choosing between saving money for college or feeding gas into my car. I didn't worry about recessions. I didn't know what an economic crisis felt like, and never in a million years did I think gas prices would get up to almost $4. eeeeeeew.

So now I drive a fuel efficient Honda and try (despite not wanting to) to hold onto the solid job I have with both hands. The truth is I can't imagine being an adolescent today in America - I don't know why, but somehow reading that article about the lack of jobs for kids made me feel that something care-free, something simple, was vanishing: the (relatively) uncomplicated teenage years as the past few generations have known it.

I know (and sympathize) for those in this generation and the previous who have always had to deal with hardship and needed to make money from the time they were 14 - and I respect them. But in some senses it seems like the teenage years as exemplified in Sixteen Candles, Can't Hardly Wait, and American Pie is slipping away one crumb at a time as gas prices rise and jobs decrease. The cost of life is increasing while our ability to make money to pay for it is decreasing. Parents won't be able to support for kids as long anymore, pushing some teens into the work force at an age earlier than they might have been had they lived ten years ago. Also, as the credit crunch works itself out, it will be harder for people to be approved for loans (for school and otherwise) which will add to the economic responsibility kids need to deal with sooner than before.

My generation might be the first since the one before Vietnam to say to the face of the future "Man, when I was your age I had it so much easier..."

That is what makes me a little upset, and makes me wonder if this is what it is like for the children of 2000 what it will be like when my future children are teenagers.

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