We were learning about the First World War in history class right before our world collapsed.
We were studying the imperialization and militarization that led to war, the deaths that came from it and the deals made to end it. We took the unit test on the day before we were let go for spring break, and we didn’t come back.
We lost the school year. We lost graduation parties. We lost the in-person connection with teachers and peers. We lost learning as we knew it.
I’ve been thinking about that word: lost.
The phrase “The Lost Generation,” was coined by Gertrude Stein, who heard it used by a garage owner in France when a young mechanic took too long to fix a car. The mechanic called the young people who lived through the Great War and the influenza outbreak in 1918 “une génération perdue.” The phrase was popularized by Ernest Hemmingway, but “The Lost Generation” also includes Stein and T.S. Eliott and F. Scott Fitzgerald, American writers whose work we still read and study a full century later.
My English class started reading Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” when we resumed school online in March. My teacher did her best to explain the Roaring ‘20s and how the young people of that time lived—recklessly, carelessly and aimlessly, partying, drinking and spending money. They had survived the WWI and a pandemic that killed a third of the world’s population. They had beaten death, and so they lived completely in the moment, she said, having been stripped of the illusion of democracy and of hope for peace.
I was 15 when the pandemic started. I’m 16 now and will turn 18 before it’s over, if predictions are correct. My generation is also coming of age during a time of chaos and grief. We are disoriented and lost, draped in a blanket of anxiety and hopelessness. Maybe history repeats itself; perhaps that’s our only salvation.
If 2020 is the year where everything is shaken around and flipped upside down, then 2021 will be the year of creation. After any national crisis come heroes, art and maybe something beautiful, something that will last beyond our own lives. The Black Death of the 14th century made way for the Renaissance. The Thirty Years War preceded the Enlightenment. And as Hemmingway quotes from the book of Ecclesiastes, “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh but the Earth abideth forever.” —Asher Montgomery
This issue was supposed to be a collection of community reflections about 2020, but reading that one above led me to abandon the idea.
In April, Asher Montgomery broke a human interest story for her newspaper, Hillsborough High School’s HHS Today, where she is a co-editor-in-chief. The piece was about Corey Jurgensen, who periodically walked around Tampa’s Seminole Heights neighborhood in an inflatable unicorn costume. Jurgensen spread joy wherever she went, unknowingly providing a shred of levity before all our neighborhoods would start to collectively and uniquely endure what’s been nine nerve-wracking months of life with coronavirus.
Nine days later, the Tampa Bay Times published its own version of the Seminole Heights unicorn story, with many of the same anecdotes and observations Montgomery put down on paper. USA Today straight up picked up the piece with Asher’s byline on it. The piece resonated with me because not just because it was a quintessential alt-weekly story, but because of the way Montgomery was able to write about one person’s kindness in a way that let me take a deep breath and feel alright—if just for a moment—to brace for the doldrums and devastating headlines headed our way.
To read Montgomery describe losing three years of experiences to the pandemic—and then think of how much more so many others have lost over the last nine months—is gut-churning. To read someone talk about being draped in anxiety and hopelessness, then describe the chaos and grief that’s marked her own pandemic experience, broke my heart.
Her reflection also reaffirmed my thought that this could go down as the dumbest year ever. CL’s final issue of the year is all about that bullshit. I am optimistic person, but 2020 has me feeling like I’m limping into whatever’s on the other side of Dec. 31.
That’s why I was also empowered by Montgomery referencing Gertrude Stein and Hemmingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” to remind readers that like the dude, the Earth will also abideth forever, and that her “lost generation” is the one that’ll truly be tasked with dealing with what’s coming next. I don’t know if Montgomery’s “lost generation” will end up drenched in the same debauched sauce from last century’s Roaring ‘20’s, but I’m relieved that there are people like her willing to not just write the stories but to also help make sense of it all and find some hope in the sadness, too.
Personally, I’m worried about what the next year holds, but I’ll gladly follow folks and leaders like Asher Montgomery into the abyss.
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This article appears in Dec 31, 2020 – Jan 6, 2021.
