Except for a growing coffee addiction and a slight affinity for Gwyneth Paltrow, most of this Generation X thing has passed me by. My eyebrows remain unpierced, the quick cuts on MTV give me a headache and the closest I've been to a rave happened a few months ago when I fell asleep watching Madonna on "Pop Up Video." Most of my friends have jobs, and I'd generally choose Dockers over slackers, cocktails over kegs and certainly Tom Brokaw over Jerry Springer.

At 24, I'm a few CDs, a couple of hip t-shirts and several facts about the original "Real World" roommates short of complete social irrelevancy.

I've never worked in a video store. I consider Cap'n Crunch a breakfast, not a food group. And while my parents have a beautiful basement, I have no plans to live there.

Instead of the "extreme" existences the media shows people in my age group living, my life looks a lot like mom and dad's, only with a different soundtrack and a few more outfits from The Gap.

Somehow my parents' generation got The Beatles, thin Marlon Brando and John Updike, while people my age get Hootie, Ethan Hawke and Jewel's poetry book. Instead of social upheaval, we have the Frappuccino; and where the Baby Boomers had John F. Kennedy, we have John Henson on "Talk Soup."

Thanks to ESPN, Generation X even has its own sports, most of which involve falling out of a plane strapped to a snowboard and a helmet-cam. For someone whose career athletic highlight came as the goalie in a JV soccer game which my team lost 5-0, the idea of combining gravity and athletics seems unappealing.

As a basic rule, any sport that requires so much speed, height or movement that a regular camera misses important pieces of the action is a bad idea. Having once spent a few days on crutches from a candlepin bowling injury, anything more dangerous than Frisbee golf represents an unhealthy risk.

Gen X sports all involve the potential death or horrible maiming of the athletes. As I understand it, albeit from knowledge gleaned mostly from TV commercials, the athletes high-five and chug a lot of Mountain Dew following the aforementioned physical punishment. Sure, the occasional legs snap, necks break and heads explode, but if Taco Bell says it's a sport, then play ball, start your engines, drop the puck or perhaps do all three at once while riding a street luge.

I prefer the days when "X" merely marked the spot, or at worst, combined with Y to equal 4. I'm about as extreme as Martha Stewart at a Marilyn Manson concert, and while I make a mean latte, it's unlikely Pearl Jam needs my help on its new record.