Oh my God, you guys! Joe Biden (dba The Antichrist) and Kamala Harris (dba The Devil’s Handmaiden) have sinned against us all and *gasp* forgiven student loan debt for people who can’t afford it because the price of a college education has increased something like three thousand percent since the 1960s, along with everything else needed to live, while wages have remained stagnant since Reagan was in office!
I’m Gen X. College wasn’t cheap for us, either. I dropped out the first time through because I kept watching the debt pile up and no one was offering to help, least of all my Boomer mom and her husband, or my Boomer aunts and uncles, who’d all encouraged me to go to college so I’d be able to make “more money.” Also, though, I was an English major and I didn’t want to end up teaching community college students who were only taking English because it was required, so I bailed and went to work. Because working was literally how I could make “more money” than just going to school. Plus, I was fucking tired of school. I’d been going to school since kindergarten, and I just wanted to sleep late some mornings, and hang out in my underwear and watch As The World Turns and Guiding Light.
There’s nothing more exhausting than having someone who paid a grand total of $4,000 for a four-year college degree, who bought their first home for $15,000, and who bought a brand-new car for $3500 tell you (read: me) “You can do anything you set your mind to!” That’s just Boomerspeak for “You’re on your own.”
I heard that a lot growing up, from my father’s side of the family that thought I should enlist in the military straight out of high school the way my father and uncles had, and my mother’s side of the family, that thought I should have a choice: enlist in the military straight out of high school or go to college. Really, though, they meant “trade school.” Like, some night course that took about six months and didn’t cost a lot, since they would not be helping with the cost. Think welding or small engine repair. And for the love of fuck, don’t suggest cosmetology. That’s what fags do! You want people to think you’re a fag? (Spoiler alert: Yes. Yes, I do want people to think I’m a fag.)
No one fetishizes the American military complex like Boomers do. Well, unless you count the producers and purveyors of 1980s gay porn. And it makes a little sense, if you think about it: their fathers and uncles were all heroes returning from having defeated the Axis powers in World War II. Then those same fathers and uncles deployed again to Korea when they were children. Then they either did or didn’t fight in Vietnam themselves when they came of age. So, really, war permeated their lives and I guess they figured it should permeate everyone else’s, too. I ignored all that shit. Fuck them. Like, I registered for the draft when I turned eighteen, but that was it.
So, college it was. But it didn’t work out, because I was tired of school by that time. And I didn’t really have a plan going in. “Go to college” sounds like good advice, and getting accepted feels good, like you really accomplished something, when really all you did was write the three-page equivalent of the question they ask Miss America contestants when the pageant gets down to the final five. Just throw “world peace” in there and you’re golden. God, I remember agonizing over my essay. Like what I wrote really mattered. And how I expressed myself. Like what didn’t matter the most to the cabal of wizened old men with their stinky pipe tobacco and women wearing tweed in August was whether or not I could afford the tuition and the materials. Thank God I didn’t have to live on-campus, or I would have been forced to live out of my 1979 Mazda GLC hatchback.
When you’re young and dumb, you can work shit jobs and it doesn’t really affect you. It’s like, you know it’s a crappy job in a restaurant (and fast food, at that), but the people you work with are fun. You get high with them and do shots of tequila after work and a couple of the guys will let you suck them off if you say the right thing and buy the tequila. It’s whatever. Then you start maturing, finally—because no one is really an adult at the age of eighteen, I don’t care what bad parents say—and realize people your age are working “real” jobs, making “real” money, in offices and places where their workday is ending as yours is beginning. And they’re not driving the same car they drove in high school. They’re buying new cars, because they have good credit and can afford the payments. They finished college because their parents paid for it, so they have degrees.
I spoke to a college admissions counselor when I was in my mid-20s and thought I might give college another try, something more rewarding than English, something fun, I didn’t even know what. I just dipped in one afternoon on my way to work and she pretty much told not to bother applying for any kind of financial aid because I was a single, white male. I laughed in her face and walked out. She might have been right, but I doubt it. I doubted it then, but not enough to challenge her on her bigotry-disguised-as-inside-knowledge.
I did go back to college when I hit 30, though. I applied for financial aid and got none, so I took out loans because it was the only way. I graduated at the top of my class and started repaying the loans to the tune of something like $400 a month. And it fucking sucked, I’m not going to lie. I’m still paying, too, twenty years later, though my monthly payments have steadily decreased. And I probably won’t be eligible for the forgiveness because my husband makes a metric fuck-ton of money compared to what I make, and it always seems to push us into the tax bracket that’s never eligible for stimulus or forgiveness or supplemental unemployment.
I could be bitter. A lot of people would be. Hell, the person I was in my 20s and 30s would be bitter. But I’m not a soulless ghoul cursed to walk the earth in perpetual misery because other people get things I don’t get. My pleasure doesn’t depend on the suffering of others. I know what it’s like to struggle and not be able to see a way out, because I did it in my 20s and I don’t wish the way I felt on anyone, not even people I dislike. I want people to be able to take vacation and actually go somewhere, instead of pretending they’re having the time of their lives staying at home and binge-watching Designing Women and The Golden Girls on Hulu. I want them to be able to buy the cool shoes they saw at the skate shop, and a cool t-shirt to match it. I want people to be able to buy the good cheese at the grocery store, the cheddar that’s actually from England or the brie that’s really from France.
How fucking wretched do you have to be to enjoy watching people struggle and suffer, all while telling them that you did it when you were their age, so why can’t they? God. Can that generation just die out already? Is there a petition I can sign to make that happen? Because it seems that’s the only answer. I’ve never seen so many people so unwilling to step out of their own heads, their own experiences, and at least try to see things from someone else’s perspective.
And no, I don’t have the answer we all need. I’m just processing this shit myself. Let people receive things they need. Let people find some measure of peace in their lives. Let people not have to choose between medication and rent. Let people afford childcare. Let people enjoy a trip to the beach. It’s not hard to be a decent person. Or maybe it is, for some people. And those people suck. Don’t be one of those people.