We're Now Latchkey Adults

Gen X is famously known as the “latchkey kids,” named for the keys our parents tied around our necks with a shoelace or left under the doormat so we could let ourselves in after school.

We were unsupervised and feral, drinking from garden hoses and riding our banana-seat Huffys around the neighborhood until well past dark.

I have hazy memories of coming home to an empty house with my friend Matt and trying to replicate the perfect Wendy’s old-fashioned square hamburger. We never got it quite right, but we burned through a respectable number of pans trying.

Afterward we’d play street hockey or tackle football with no pads, where someone inevitably twisted an ankle or raised a welt, cried, and carried on.

I'm in my late fifties now, and I still come home to an empty house. My wife is at work, one kid’s in college, the other at high school water polo practice. My beloved dad has passed away and my mom is 3,000 miles away.

The difference is we’re paying for everything now, the key's on my actual keyring, and the Wendy’s burgers have been replaced by Trader Joe’s soup dumplings.

There’s no note from my mom on the fridge that reads: Dinner’s in the freezer. Clean your room. But there is a 401(k) statement that reads: This is nowhere near enough to retire on.

There are no errant pucks and clothesline tackles, but there are still the bruises that come with being the oldest person in the Zoom meeting by decades, and that nagging fear that either AI or ageism is coming for your job.

Everything has changed around us, but nothing’s changed.

We’re all grown up, but there are still no grownups to help us out.

We were forgotten then and we’re forgotten now.

Tears for Fears sang, “Everybody wants to rule the world,” but it doesn’t look like that’s happening for us. The Boomers won’t retire until they’re 92, and the Millennials are grabbing the corner office right over our heads.

The world is collapsing around us. The kids have the keys to the car. Our parents are forgetting our names.

The promise that each generation does better than the last ended with us.

But you know what? Whatever.

We’re the Latchkey Adults.

We had to figure it out on the fly then, we have to figure it out on the fly now.

I don’t know how this is all going to turn out but I do know this:

Gen X has always been under pressure.

And we won’t back down.

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