Re: Generation.

• Author: Lewis, David
• Position: The difference between Generation X and Generation Y - Editorial

Gen X soon will face its own generation gap. Y? Kids, you can talk and talk till your face is blue. Kids, but they still do just what they want to do. Why can't they be like we were, perfect in every way? What's the matter with kids today?

- From Bye Bye Birdie by Michael Stewart, Charles Strouse and Lee Adams.

Not long ago, my colleague and fellow ColoradoBiz columnist led his column with a most beautiful quotation by Nathaniel Hawthorne. "By stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to the fearful risk of losing his place forever," it read in part.

Well, that got my competitive juices flowing. I spent months searching for a comparably profound, incisive, acute quotation, and here it is, direct from the 1963 film Bye Bye Birdie, where it was sort of sung by the immortal Paul Lynde.

Kidding aside, the lyric above put its figurative finger on one of the Colorado economy's sorest sore spots - practically a mantra here at ColoradoBiz World Headquarters - "recruiting, training and retaining employees."

Especially, one might add, "snotty young Gen-X slackers who've been spoiled rotten, couldn't find Europe on a map and think $60,000-a-year jobs grow on trees."

This subject has bugged me all year, since I read a story by Denver Rocky Mountain News reporter Bill Scanlon, "Teens Admit Their Generation is Spoiled."

"Is this generation spoiled, having been handed too much?" Scanlon asked. "Yes, a thousand times yes, the students said, almost unanimously," he answered.

Other factors fueled my concern.

OK, I will admit it. My drop-dead hipness is all a pose, a remarkably successful pose, but still. My Gucci toothbrush, my ostrich attache case, my vodka martini (shaken not stirred), my license to kill, all a pose. Actually I'm a middle-aged guy who thinks the world is going to hell in a Hip-Hop handbasket.

This is why I went in search of expertise, people who understand these things, people who have something important to say, people who have written books.

This is why I recently took a week (that's where I was, Mr. Wiesner, honest) and had coffee with two authors, one, Maria Nemeth, passing through town; one, Claire Raines, Denver-based but usually elsewhere pulling down big consulting fees. Nemeth wrote "The Energy of Money: A Spiritual Guide to Financial and Personal Fulfillment." Raines wrote "Beyond Generation X: A Practical Guide for...