It's hard to stop being so self conscious about things. I still catch myself in being apologetic about things that I like, which is bull****.

Were your grandparents not self-absorbed in their own way?

The only things I love as much as my coworker loves Power Rangers is racist punk and comic books.

They were truly horrible extraordinarily cruel people. No joke.

Pretty sure same. I think the Great Depression might have destroyed an entire generation's ability to feel empathy for people who aren't wired for capitalism.

You would think it would be the opposite but unfortunately that’s not how it usually works

All 4 of my grandparents were really nice people. My father's parents were involved in various charities and sometimes lent out a room to students from Romania, Hungary, etc.
My Mother's parents were just super nice and always super hospitable. I remember being on vacation there as a kid. There would often be guests for a cup of coffee, like people who lived nearby, distant family or even the mailman.

All of them had been relatively poor farmers when they were younger. In any case, I think it's a bit too easy to broad brush an entire generation.

My grandparents and great-grandparents were all abusive narcissistic *******s, in the past few years I've given up a lot of the resentment and anger I feel toward my own narcissistic abusive ******* father because it's clear he was never strong enough to break the cycle of abuse. That **** runs deep. His mother used to lock him in the dark unfurnished basement for days at a time as a 6-7 year old when she was tired of him and eventually he learned to stash can openers so he could eat the canned goods she had horded away down there.


As a toddler she also used to hide him under her work desk at the rental car service where she and my grandpa worked like the dog in gremlins.

I'm mainly talking about America and the children raised during the Great Depression and it's also important to note the Red Scares that demonized socialism, but the mentality born of extreme scarcity definitely encouraged those kids to believe that hard work and self-sufficiency were the be-all-end-all of your worth as a person.

No prob. Your dad and I had a discussion about it.