I have a humble plea for my fellow members of Generation X.

Shut up. Stop posturing about our generation’s uniqueness. Stop gloating about how tough life supposedly made us. Stop acting like the music was legions better. (OK, it was pretty good, but then again: hair metal.)

Seriously, please stop making Reels and memes like the one showing Judd Nelson as John Bender in “The Breakfast Club” that claims we turned 30 at age 10 and are still 30 at age 50. That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, and it’s telling that the meme picks the hardest-luck character in the movie, which is about a group of teens in Saturday detention, some of whom clearly came from intact homes with engaged parents.

Personally, I was too busy drawing colonial vipers from “Battlestar Galactica” at age 10 to turn 30.

Thanks to the onward march of time, our oldest ranks will be hitting 60 next year, and our youngest will turn 45. We’re starting to age, sure, but we don’t have to choose to sound old. I’m talking to those of you who point fingers and complain about Millennials (born between ‘81 and ‘96) and Gen Zers (‘97 to 2012). They grew up in a different time with their own music, TV shows, cultural references, etc., just like we did after the Boomers and the Silent Generation.

If we don’t want to hear whatever equivalent of “OK Boomer” is coming down the pike for us, let’s try sounding a little less smug about our perceived generational accomplishments and differences.

Boasting about being somehow more feral or better than the generations we’re sandwiched between is a bad look for us. It’s divisive, yes, but it also mars a pretty spotless record, in my opinion.

Generationally speaking

We’re supposed to be the generation that was different. Yes, it was fun to be a kid in the ‘70s, a teen most of the ‘80s and a 20-nothing most of the ‘90s. But until social media came along, we weren’t really smug about our (lack of) contributions to the world, keeping to a slightly less engaged, more jaded standpoint. We weren’t the Boomers bragging about how changing the world and showering subsequent generations with our nostalgia.

We may have invented our own games out of boredom once we got away from the specter of our cable TV, but we weren’t doing it so we could someday deem ourselves better for it. Yet I’m looking at an Instagram post from an account called “totally80sroom” that reads “GenX … We straight up raised ourselves” with a Ted Nugent song playing over an aged pic of a kid jumping on a bike.

Oh, did we now? I mean, yes, there were challenges. Lots of our parents divorced, but most of the kids I grew up with had engaged, married parents or at least remarried folks. My parents stayed together. They both worked, too, although with the flexible schedules of a firefighter dad, a mom who owned her own business and two older sisters, it never felt that much like I was a latch-key kid. The freedom I had was largely born of boredom and being the youngest, not neglect.

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Not a day goes by — and I’m sure the algorithm gods are having a laugh at my expense, because I can’t help but read and watch — where I don’t see a post or a Reel patting Gen X on the back about what bad-ass latchkey, hose-water-drinking neglected kids we were.

You’re hosed

Poppycock. Are we really going to hang our generational hat on the merits of operating a key and lock or drinking out of a hose? You know they still make hoses, right? And that the water coming out of them tastes terrible? If you’re so tough, go outside and drink from it now. I’ll wait.

You know as well as I do we weren’t out there guzzling hose water because we were intentionally toughening ourselves up, or you’d be drinking from a hose right now. We were just doing the same things as our peers, taking life and water as they presented themselves to us.

Generally speaking, as young adults, we were more about experiences than chasing the almighty dollar. We were inured to the advertising that had hammered us from birth. For a while, temp agencies were all the rage, but by the late ‘90s, I didn’t have any friends or peers who didn’t have a full-time job. In short, we sold out and traded the hoses for bottled water.

As generational beefing heated up in recent years, we did so well for a minute, letting Millennials and Baby Boomers have their debates and shying away from the arguments between Millennials arguing with Gen Z over ankle-less socks and side parts versus crew socks and middle parts.

It seemed so Gen X of us to not be part of the stupidity, but from what I see on Instagram these days, we’re now firing at will at younger generations. It always makes me cringe.

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I guess as you age and robust adulthood gives way to gray hair and encroaching decrepitude, you get defensive. I suppose pride — even bland, broad, generational pride — is one of those defense mechanisms. But it’s not too late to change course.

One of the things I absolutely hated as a teen in the ‘80s was the phrase “Get a life.” It was ubiquitous. It was coldhearted. It was uncreative, an utterance more likely than not to come from the pieholes of vapid people. And there were A LOT of vapid people in the ‘80s.

It’s with that in mind that I tell you in language you may understand, my fellow Gen Xer: Get a life.

At the very least, please stay away from meme generators.