Sometime during May 2006, I randomly decided to watch Yu-Gi-Oh. I developed some interest in it my late senior year in high school and kept regular track of it into my second year of college. By that time, I stopped watching it since it had gotten so repetitive and drawn-out. Anyway, as I was waiting for Yu-Gi-Oh to come on, I was flipping through the various Saturday morning cartoons. Most of them seemed drab and unentertaining to me. Then I started thinking about all the cartoons I had watched during my childhood and even late into my adolescent years. The amount of cartoons I had watched steadily decreased the older I became. I compared these new cartoons to the ones in my past viewing experience and deemed my past better than the present.

My mind wandered to other topics such as music. Songs that were popular in 1996 (and some of which I still like listen to occasionally) are no longer played on the radio (except for very rare instances). That really made me feel old. 10 years ago I was in the sixth grade and was 12 years old. I thought about the video games I used to play and compared them to today’s games. It’s hard for me to evaluate today’s games by today’s “standards” since they are so different now. It’s easy to see the evolution that has taken place, but I find it difficult to keep up with it. As a result, I dismiss mostly every game and gamer child (anyone born in the 1990’s and later) as “bad” since they are nothing like the “old days” of my youth.

I am only 21 years old. I am still young in some respects, but just thinking about that viewpoint made me feel so old. I really understood what the generation gap was and what it felt like to be “old” and how today’s current generation is so different. I hope in time, they will come to realize the same thing. I personally have never thought that I would reach such a conclusion, but I suppose it was bound to happen eventually. It is our past (particularly our younger years) that are so formative and developmental in who we are today. Once that ground foundation is set, breaking apart and starting over is a really hard thing to do. I guess this is all part of becoming an adult.