Chapter 24
24
Sunday 24 April
Have not seen Linda for so long. Hate to admit it but miss her. Can’t even remember why we were in a fight.
Oh yeah, she’s a rude harpy.
But she’s
my
harpy. And didn’t we all, like Monsieur Ralph, have our bad days? Don’t we all hurt each other from time to time?
Decided to text her to see how she was doing.
You alive? X
She replied immediately.
Yeah *tree emoji*
Heartened, I typed:
So guess what, went out with Val and these two guys I met with her, Eric and Ralph at a book club.
So I’ve heard. Val couldn’t keep her mouth shut. So how was your date with Musty and Fusty?
I giggled.
Which is which?
Can’t tell them apart?
Linda texted.
Eric thinks I’m a millennial! *grin emoji*
You look so young, so I’m not surprised
, Linda admitted generously. The ice, it seemed, was beginning to thaw.
—
“But you
are
a millennial,” Jason told me, later, in my apartment. He had come over to hang out with me after I sent out an SOS on the group chat for a “drinks-free evening.” “You’re what? Thirty? Thirty-one?”
What a darling! Someone should marry Jason right away. “Thirty-three. Ish.”
He did the math and started googling the birth year guidelines for millennials. “So you were born in the mid-eighties. That means you’re officially one of us, according to Pew Research and the US Census, which puts the cutoff point at 1981.”
Felt the existential crisis of being a millennial hit me in the gut. Dear Diary, I am not good with social media. Facebook is already a minefield, and I use Instagram and Twitter purely as stalking/fact-finding tools. And look at how my attempt at online dating went.
“It’s OK,” Jason said, soothingly. “You don’t have to be number one at everything.”
11:55 a.m.
Wrong, Jason, wrong. Thy challenge is accepted. Have just ordered bestselling e-books written by fellow peers more zeitgeisty than me:
Instagram for New Influencers
,
Reddit-Ready!: Forums for Success
,
How to Break the Internet with Your Latest Selfie
, and
Tweeting for the Modern Jezebel
and will finish these e-books tonight. I must not let my generation down.
Monday 25 April
1:45 a.m.
Will just have to let the entire generation down. These e-books are barely readable. Nobody can spell anymore. We are all doomed.
7:05 a.m.
Ooh, text!
Andrea, I can’t wait to see you when I’m back from Dubai. Would you please do me the honor of having dinner with me this Saturday at Les Deux?
Not a hashtag, acronym, emoji, slang word, abbreviation, contraction, typo, or bad punctuation or grammar in sight. What a man.
9:15 a.m.
Just got an earful from a client because I, or rather one of my minions, forgot to capitalize one letter of a company’s name on a board resolution, which was still in draft form, by the way.
Well, just wait till the lawyers of the Gen Z cohort are unleased upon the world. Forgetting to capitalize will be the least of anyone’s concerns.