I'm so spoiled by being a lifelong-disabled xennial in the sense that it's meant I've found affinity throughout my life among other Gen X and millennial crips: people who, if not born with their disabilities, at least acquired them during our "working age" years.
Because hanging out with my boomer parents is a culture shock. They don't have the range. They only know disability as shameful and only cope with it by ignoring it and pushing past limits.
It is frustrating and it freaks me out!
The other thing my parents don't have the range for is literally moving.
They haven't done it since 1980! My dad said something like "I'm glad we only have to move once!" that made me realize he was 30 when they moved here. Since I was 30, I've moved a couple times (and helped friends); I'm only 40!
Heavy stuff on top of flimsy stuff. Big boxes too full of heavy things to lift. Little soft stuff in the car before big rigid stuff. Mom thinks I'm "too critical" if I protest or undo these things.
Here we are, a mere 12 hours from having woken up in a different house, and my mom is confidently asserting that she's lost something permanently and forever.
Yeah. That sounds like someone who hasn't moved since the Carter administration.
My mom doesn't know how to unpack either. She is fixated on locating a particular thing (that isn't urgent or essential) and wandering all over looking for it.
Also where the boxes or bags do have labels it's just the contents, not where it goes. "Pots for plants" rather than even the most basic things like whether this is indoor or outdoor. "Bed pillows"...there are three beds! In two levels of the house!
