When it comes to mountains, what things that come to mind?

With the Alps, it’s yodeling, edelweiss and Heidi.

With the Rockies, it’s Pikes Peak and John Denver.

With the Adirondacks, it’s logging, TB and black flies.

But with the Poconos, it’s only one thing — their honeymoon resorts with the heart-shaped bathtubs, champagne jacuzis and beds as big as a tennis court.

But if that’s all people know, it’s a shame because “The Generation Gap” first appeared in print in the heart of the Poconos, in a headline in the Stroudsburg Record in 1962.

And what, pray tell, was The Generation Gap?

That term, which I haven’t heard in decades, was ALL I heard in my teens, 20’s and into my 30’s. Essentially, it was a label that tried to explain the cause of young-person/adult conflict of those conflict-ridden days.

Whatever the issue — campus unrest, Vietnam, the feminist movement, civil rights, avant garde in the arts, child-rearing practices, religion revampings, riots du jour — they could all be dismissed as due to “The Generation Gap.” It was as if it was such a tangible entity you could go into any hardware store, order three fifteen-foot, 3/4 inch sections and they’d ask you if you wanted them to take it to your truck.

Early on as a teacher I read an essay from some college prof who had a radically different take on it. According to him, The Generation Gap was pure bumpf. Yeah, sure, there were lots of conflicts between the Boomers and the Greatest. But that’s all they were — conflicts. Because as sure as God makes big red apples, there were lots of other conflicts that DIDN’T have labels. Hell, there were conflicts galore WITHIN my generation and no one found a catchy label for them (The Non-Generation Gap, perhaps?).

Anyhow, his thesis left a great impression on me, and the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. And it made me promise myself I wouldn’t use that term, or even think of it. Instead — wide-eyed innocent that I was –I was gonna make sure I understood my students, they understood me, and we’d all get along swimmingly. And to be honest, I was pretty successful.

Had I, as both a genius communicator and empath, bridged the GG? Had I unlocked the secret of conflict resolution? Had I solved one of humankind’s greatest problems, one that went back to Cain and Abel?

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No GG

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Of course I hadn’t.

And the reason I hadn’t is because in my case, there was no GG to begin with: My students and I were in the SAME generation. Yeah, I was seven or eight years older than them and had more experience (“experience” often being a synonym for failure). But we’d all grown up in the same America, listened to the same music, read the same books, watched the same TV shows, had had similar high school experiences, and so on. But there was no GG between us. If anything, they might’ve considered me one of their peers, just on the other side of the desk and maybe even a bit cooler.

Proof those students and I were in the same generation is that after a bunch of years in the trenches of academe, it was obvious my students and I were as alike as chalk and cheese. I didn’t understand their slang or their style (remember the big hair and barfworthy fruit-scented mousse?). I’d never heard of their bands, didn’t know their movie references and celebrities and found their familiarity with adults — especially teachers — disquieting, to say the least.

I’d like to say that as time went on I began to understand young people better, but I didn’t. Au contraire. In fact, they seemed less like my fellow Americans that members of an alien race from the outer reaches of the solar system.

Like most things, the process was evolutionary. After a long enough time, that attitude became so entrenched I didn’t even know I had it. But then, suddenly, I did.

Call it an epiphany if you want, but one day, out of the blue, I realized something radical: Whenever someone my age did something stupid, I thought, What an eejit. But when a young person did it, I thought, That whole damned generation is doomed.

So a 60 year-old nitwit was just a nitwit; a 20 year-old one was only one of an huge group of same-age drooling morons.

Tarring with the same brush? Indeed. But it was what I was doing,without ever realizing it. It was just a fact of life that between me and the young, it was Us vs. Them, and they were all hopeless. On a related note, I told anyone who wanted to hear (and no doubt everyone who didn’t) that I had no young friends.

But if I was wrong about thinking an entire generation were numbnuts, could I have been wrong about not having any young friends? I mulled over that for a long while.

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Perspective

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Of course, “young” and “old” are relative terms. But when the Big 8-0 is within reach of one’s bony arthritic fingers, darn near everyone you know is, if not young, then for sure, younger.

But how young is young?

While compared to me, 50s and 60s are not old, they’re also not young. Forties isn’t young either, and while mid-30’s to 40’s is “youngish,” it’s not young. But U-35 is young.

So now The Big Question, Do I have any friends under 35?

The Cosmic Kid immediately came to mind. He’s a full 50 years younger than me, is a computer whiz (makes his living as a web designer), knows bands I never heard of, goes to raves and all his friends are his age. So, taking a hard, objective look, we have nothing in common. However, I enjoy his company immensely, he has a great sense of humor (that is, he laughs at my jokes), and he talks about all sorts of subjects so intelligently that I always get new insights from him.

Beyond that, he helps me with my mishugge projects. He not only designed one of the Chucklehead Hoedown posters, he told jokes in both of them. He was with the Brothers of the Bush in the Carnival parade and with the Free Spirits in our Pride parade. And if that ain’t a friend, I don’t know what is.

The “kids” who work in the Enterprise, who are all under 30, if not much over it, are so bright and so much fun, I stop in there almost every day to visit. They work their tails off, all day, every day, but they also will shoot the breeze with me, often under deadline and protest, but they’ll do it nonetheless. Clearly on the friends’ list.

Then there’s Natty Nat. He’s in his early thirties and his hobby is his band, which belongs to the Dungeon Synth genre. What is Dungeon Synth? I don’t know. I only know it sure ain’t anything like my faves, Bob Seger, J. Geils and the Grateful Dead. But every time I see him, we have a great convo, and he always tells me things I never knew. Plus, he also has a wry sense of humor, loves animals, and is a hard worker and loyal family man. Thus another friend.

And how about L’il Mister Matt? He’s eight and is the sweetest guy ever. Whenever he sees me, he gives me a hug, and he also cracks me up with his joie de vivre and his humor. One time when I ran into him, I asked him if he knew where most flat tires take place. The answer, according to where I read it, is, In the fork in the road. But catch this: Before I got to the punchline, he snapped, totally on his own, In the Rusty Nail. Friend indeed.

There’s also the entire young staff at Nori’s. They’re all under 30, I think, and combine friendly with funky, so chatting with any of them is a delight. Are they friends? Well, outside of Nori’s we’re definitely in very separate worlds. But IN Nori’s (which as far as I’m concerned, is a world of its own, if not an entire cosmos), they’re great company. So, yep, friends.

Oops, I almost forgot Bushwhack Jack’s granddaughters, June and Eden. I’ve lost track of their age, maybe 10 and 12, but they’ve always been incredibly friendly. They always call me by name, they answer my questions patiently, no matter how complex and profound they are (Example: So what’s one thing you learned in school this week?). Beyond that, they make me birthday and holiday cards. Friends.

And it went on like that. The more I thought about it, the more I realized not only do I have young friends, I have a bunch of them. Sure, friendships with them aren’t like the ones I have with peeps I’ve known for 50 years, or with fellow Squids, or compulsive readers and writers, or Members of the Tribe. But, still, they’re friends. And not necessarily lesser friends, just friends of a different ilk.

Perhaps the only things we have in common are we’re always glad to see each other and we like each other’s company. And ya know what? That’s good enough for me.

Ultimately, maybe to make more friends all we need to do is expand our definition.