Life at Grady: Talkin 'bout my generation gap

A version of the following post, by Kimberly Manning, appeared on the blog Reflections of a Grady Doctor.

I used to pride myself on being a "cool" attending. I was always familiar with the pop culture that permeated my learners' lives, and even received compliments on a fairly regular basis for the things I'd wear to work. There's something nice about having a 23-year-old medical student ask where you bought your shoes.

It all started going downhill with me not being on Facebook. That was when I realized I was the only person my students knew who didn't use the word "friend" as a verb. Then there was the time my students used Google images and Wikipedia to help me get what a "hipster" is.

There are also the moments when we discuss where we were in our lives when a particular song came out. They remember it as a pre-school memory; I remember it as a high school, after-school dance anthem. Regardless of all this, in my mind I have maintained my cool position, and mostly stayed in step with most of my learners without actually feeling, well, old.

That is, until 40 started gaining on me. With the big 4-0 less than six months away, the generation gap has started to widen big-time...and with that gap comes a few ticks down in the "cool" stock.

(Click "more" button below to continue reading.)

***
I was rounding with my residents on the ward one day, and was in a rather playful mood. We'd all been full of giggles that morning, but had managed to stay on task enough to get through our eight new admissions.

We listened as Dorothy, one of the students, presented the final patient. She told us all about this gentleman who'd been admitted with an exacerbation of asthma. Fortunately, he was now doing much better. Dorothy reached the 'social history'--the part where we discuss bad habits and living arrangements. "He doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke"--

"What does he do?" I interrupted quickly while letting out a goofy snicker. (Okay, yes, I know this was not the most professional thing in the world for an attending to do on wards, but I just couldn't resist the joke after such a perfect segue.)

"Pardon?" asked Dorothy.

"Don't drink, don't smoke--what do you do?" I sang with an accompanying finger snap. I chuckled again and kept snapping, waiting for someone to join in. My dorky finger popping slowed down to an eventual halt.

Silence.

The team just stared at me incredulously, wondering what on earth I could be talking about. Not one person nodded in acknowledgement. In fact, they all gave me these uncomfortable, tight-lipped smiles--almost like they felt sorry for me for my unfortunate, old-school outburst, and for this revelation that I was actually not a cool attending at all.

"Adam Ant?" I queried, "Adam Ant, y'all! Goody Two Shoes? You guys don't remember Goody Two Shoes?" I started snapping again. "Come on, y'all! That was a popular song!"

Crickets.

Um, yeah. Popular in, like, 1982. Turns out that not only had they never heard of Adam Ant or the song before, a fair number of them weren't even born yet when the song was on Billboard's Top 100. Wow. My "cool stock" clearly fell 100 points that day. Turns out that I was "talkin' 'bout my generation"--literally. (That's what I get for being unprofessional on rounds.)

***
It gets worse. Tonight I was watching the BET Awards with my mom, dad, sister and husband. T.I., a rather famous rap star, was on stage performing. Mom said, "This hollering on stage is really annoying. I can't see how you guys stand this."

"That's because you don't know what you're listening to," my sister replied dryly.

"Yes I do," Mom shot back, "I know who that is. That's JJ Cool Z." She was 100% serious.

JJ Cool Z? Wow, Mom. Really?

And I thought I was lame. That was so worse than the Adam Ant outburst.

Labels: generation gap, Life at Grady

posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM