Wth are Dunk-A-Roos? or, Why, seriously, the kids are alright.

I was riding the bus the other day and two kids who looked about 16 were sitting behind me.

One of them was talking about his favourite rapper’s Instagram, and how the artist had gone out of his way to outrageously thank a fan who had sent him Dunk-A-Roos.

Then his friend asked, “What the hell are Dunk-A-Roos?”

And so one kid struggled for a good 5 minutes to explain Dunk-A-Roos to the other one. While very entertaining, this got me thinking about the next generation. Not technically the next generation, but the state of kids younger than me, and how they could live upstanding, productive lives without knowing, let alone tasting, one of the greatest snack treats ever invented*.

*disclaimer: I have not been bought off by Betty Crocker, and I’m pretty sure they’ve stopped making Dunk-A-Roos.

The point is that everyone is worried about Generation-Y (properly defined as anyone born between the early 1980s to the early 2000s, though stereotypically 20-something). What nobody seems to realize is that Gen-Y is worried about itself, or at least its younger members.

The 30 year olds call out the 20 somethings for laziness, the 20 somethings call out the teenagers for ignorance, and the teenagers…well, I honestly don’t remember what we said about younger kids. Probably something to the effect of “No matter what TV show you were raised on, Arthur was better.”

True, times for our generation are tough. We have the highest tuition and the most debt, we are likely to die sooner and are buying houses later. It’s the hardest it’s ever been.

It’s always been the hardest it’s ever been, for every successive generation, perhaps with the exception of the group that followed the Great Depression.

Technology has made life noisy. We’ll find the quiet. The media has made life scary. We’ll find the courage. Climate change/the economy/the next pandemic have made life insecure, and, some would argue, meaningless. We'll find our own brand of security, and our own meaning.

So as I sat on the bus, wondering about these kids with no sense of snacking, I sat back and simply thought “They’ll find their way”. Even if every circumstance changes, this is something that never will.

This, and Arthur still being the best show ever.