Generation X Raising Generation O, or The End of Irony?

12Nov08

Obama’s election changed our lives.

Not just the fact that we donated to a political campaign for the first time ever.  Nor that my 6-year-old raised ten times her age in campaign donations with her Lemonade for Change stand…but it is now quite clear to me that their (okay, our) deep engagement with all things Obama, even all things American has become an ongoing, intergral, even unconscious part of our family life. At least for my deeply unironic children.

Exhibit A:

Driving home from school and yesterday with my 4-year-old, Finn spied, towering over Ben Franks, the local drive-in hot dog stand, “That American Flag!”

I peered through my window at the flag, which was tattered at the edges, but still, undoubtedly, an American flag. “Yes, that is an American Flag.”

“That same flag Obama has!”

“Yes, it is,” I answered.

A few seconds later, more thoughtful, he announced, “I want American flag.”

“You have an American flag,” I said, glad that I could guarantee that we were not wholly unpatriotic. “In one of your toy bins.”

The flag in question was a leftover small flag, perhaps one of our purchases in support of Lemonade for Change, perhaps from someone else’s long past Fourth of July celebration.  It was a flimsy polyester thing, on a wooden dowel. He knew exactly the flag to which I referred.

“NOT I want small flag.  I want big flag.”

“What would you do with a big flag?” I asked.

“Put it on a pole in my grass,” he answered, as if it were obvious.  Which to him it is. For me, skeptic, former activist, to whom patriotism often meant protest, this was a defining moment, a real revolution in the difference between how my children will see their President–and thus their country–and how I have for much of my adult life.

But why not be proud?  Why not stick a flag in our lawn to usher in the new era?

Reader, stay tuned. Change has come.

Filed under: Gen X raising Gen O, Uncategorized   |  1 Comment
Tags: Barack Obama, Children's politics