So you don't get TikTok. Well, maybe your parents didn't get Tamagotchi or the Rubik's

cube or lava lamps. Or heck, the old hoop and stick game. Generations may never see eye-to-eye,

but on this week's selected shorts, they find common ground.

I'm Meg Wallitzer, your boomer host. Stay with us.

You're listening to Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time.

Before I committed fully to calling myself a boomer, I decided to take one of those online quizzes, and this one said something like, only baby boomers can pass this online quiz. And not only

did I pass, I got a 100. And then the teacher called me up to her desk to give my test a star,

which was in the shape of a 1960s TV dinner for that extra boomer feeling. So if you need any

dated references for your own short fiction, you know who to call.

When we say Generation Gap, we think about the ways the mores, customs, and social expectations

of one older group of people seem foreign to a younger group and vice versa. The term, which

emerged in the 1960s, often implies disapproval or amazement,

when I was your age, or I can't believe you did that back then. But between intimate relations,

these gaps can reveal themselves in much subtler ways. Love, hope, or disappointment might mix

in with the usual sort of exasperation or disbelief.

When you see photos from previous generations in your family,

often the young people look sort of old and serious, and you think they're nothing like me.

It's because of their clothes and hairstyles, and sometimes it's just what a sepia tinge will do. But other times, it can be

sort of moving and disconcerting to see old photos of your parents or grandparents when they

were young and think, wow, they actually look young. In fact, they do look like me, because then

you know that though you are of different generations, nothing separates

people from the passage of time, not even listening to this show, I'm sorry to say. Yes, they did

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