CHAPTER 4
Big Bird, Wayne’s World, and Home Alone: Signposts for Generation X
Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn’t have anything to do with it.
—Haim Ginott1
Critical Events in the Lives of Generation X
1973 First cellular phone call
1978 Jonestown mass suicides
1981 President Ronald Reagan assassination attempt
1986 Challenger disaster
1987 Stock market crash (Black Monday)
1988 Pan Am Flight 103 crash
1989 Exxon Valdez spill
1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall
1990 Gulf War
1992 Recession
1992 Rodney King beating
1993 First Boomer president (Bill Clinton)
1993 Dotcom boom begins
1994 Death of Kurt Cobain
1995 O. J. Simpson trial
In 1991, Douglas Coupland coined the term “Generation X” to describe people born between 1966 ...
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