Just this afternoon, I posted a comment in response to the millennial/Gen-X discussion that’s been circulating these past few days. I regret that comment. Because what the hell do I know about any of these repositories for demographic drivel? Pretty much nothing. I understand statistics with the sophistication of a drunk lemur (I’ve heard only 12% of drunk lemurs exhibit signs of sophisticated statistical analysis), and I’ve been too cornered by my own concerns and parochial unease to speak from anything resembling anecdotal authority.

But I love any generalization about generations. What illicit drugs are to Charlie Sheen, stories about generational trends are to my half-pint mind. What makes these stories, these op-ed hors d’oeuvres, so damnably seductive? My first and best guess is that they appeal to two powerful senses of ourselves: first, the inner sports fan, the gregarious beast who wants to feel the thrill of collective desire and aspiration; and second, the James Dean insurrectionary who wants—who needs—to feel it’s mega-me against the soggy-brained world.

So I forgive myself today’s earlier silliness, because I’m insanely susceptible to both tendencies. One minute, I want my gigantic foam we’re-number-one hand, the next minute I just want a monochrome alleyway were I can give “them” the awe-inspiring bird.

But it was silliness nonetheless. One of the true pleasures of my job is that I regularly hang out with people who range  from 18 to 85 years old. Last Friday, I went out with a few of my old students, now about 22, whose wolfish curiosities are only equaled by their yen for good living. This Friday morning, I’m going to have breakfast with an eighty-year-old Belgian friend of mine, a Proust scholar, who either fascinates me or cracks me up. Or both. I’ll often catch myself grabbing beer or coffee with millennials, Gen-Xers, Baby-Boomers, the whole lot. And unless I’m falling prey to the weaker side of myself that gloms onto imbecile abstractions, I forget that my friends and colleagues are any particular age. (Except that my 22 year old friends complain that I never Twitter, and my Belgian friend checks his email twice a week.)

The same goes for Tumblr. I can’t tell you how often a Tumblr I follow has suddenly divulged his or her age, and I am blown away. 24? 32? 19? Invariably I pictured them to be wizened wisemen, the beneficiaries of multitudinous past lives. No matter how old I get, I remain the same benighted galoot, crawling lazily between the hell of incomprehension and the heaven of sated habituation.

So enough with the whole generation thing. Besides, I’m way too X to take any of it seriously.