Work is for kids. Trix are for kids, too.

I've never considered myself a "career oriented" dude, but I found it at least mildly offensive for older goons to call us slackers. I mowed and raked a lot of lawns between the ages of 12 to 18. Sucky work that paid me between $4 to $7 an hour (depending on my age).

I suppose the older generations saw our activities like playing video games and skate boarding as lazy and disregarded the possibility that we, as children, had to actually pay for the Atari cartridges and skateboards with our own loot.

When Douglas Coupland's book, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, was first published, there were newspaper reports about how Gen X was a slacker generation with no direction. This was not at all how I saw myself or my many friends. Many of us had jobs, and had been working since we were 15 (when the laws were less strict). My graduating high school class was filled with smart, creative and athletic people who were thankfully some of the most competitive people I've ever met.