” like Walter Mondale (too young to have served in WWII,”
AKA the damn lucky generation. Probably too old for the draft by the time of Vietnam. Pete Campbell from “Mad Men” was of that age.
Me and DJ are Xers.
Heh. It does say one of the nicknames for that generation is "The Lucky Few" (who the heck was having kids in the depths of the great depression and the middle of World War II anyway? No wonder the birthrate so low back then) That, and "the silent generation", supposedly because they were "the silent majority" politicians spoke of in the 1960s, but moreso because they get noticed by the trends of society even less than the now middle aged Gen Xers.
It says some of the older "silents" served in the Korean War, so there's that.
Googling people born the same year as my Uncle, it looks like the tail end of that era ("too old to be baby boomers") produced quite a few notable icons in American music, so they got that to gloat about:
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/year/1943.html
And on the older end of the "too young to have served in World War II, too old to be baby boomers" crowd, there are pretty notable Hollywood figures, like Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood (both still with us):
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/year/1930.html
And looking at the previous generation of "cuspers" (those of born on the cusp BETWEEN two notable generational demographics), the earlier equivilent to "Xennials" (grrr I hate that nickname for my "generation"), was the "Jones Generation" (cusp between Baby Boomers / Gen X cutoff), for "Keeping up with the Joneses". Well, at least they get a cute nickname. If my mom was still here, she'd probably see Robert Downey Jr. as a "kid", even though he's 55 years old, as he was born post-JFK assassination and thus has no memory of it (Baby boomers ALWAYS seem to tell me that JFK getting killed is etched into their memories like 9/11 was for us)
It does kinda make sense to make those years the cusp though, society went thru VERY rapid, radical changes from 1963-1969 or so, and again from 1977-1985. A person born in 1961 would have experienced a VERY different childhood from one born in 1966, despite only being five years apart in age. We're basically talking growing in the doo-woop era with beach music vs. the counter-culture flower child era where everyone is on acid.
I have a hard time identifying with the culture of most of the Gen Xers, who were born in the 70s and loved E.T. and Star Wars when they were kids. And don't me started on the stupid crap millennials are into...
Being born in the early 80s just puts me and my sister in generational limbo.