Woman shares secret to Gen X’s youthful spirit and leaves the internet reminiscing childhood

Aging has been different for all generations, especially for Gen X or Generation X. Slim Sherri—who goes by @therealslimsherri on TikTok—shared her thoughts on the aging of Gen X on TikTok and how growing up was different for them. Sherri begins the video by addressing a common question about Gen X. She says, “Well it's been a while so here’s another Gen X thought of the day. People are trying to figure out why Gen X is aging differently.” She added, “I think it has something to do with our wild childhoods."

Sherri then began to talk in detail about the childhood of most of the people of Generation X. “See we were practically retired from childhood by the time we were twelve. We had been doing grown-up shit for years and a lot of us already had jobs. By the tender age of 6 or 7, we would walk ourselves to school unsupervised. And as far as supervision we didn't have a whole lot of it, we were kind of on our own. By the time we had double digits, we were already smoking and if you weren't smoking, you were experimenting with many other things,” she briefed.

She also pointed out how parents were there but also left the kids to grow up. “We were in the streets for hours and nobody cared to look for us and if they did come to hunt you down, you knew a good old-fashioned a**-whooping was waiting for you when you got home. A**-whopping was a universally understood language back then. See parents wanted to have you but they did not want to see you. They told you to go play in traffic and locked you out of the house,” she elaborated.

She stated that Gen X needed the least assistance to survive outside in the world and were good on their own. “All the adults could have vanished from the face of the earth and we would not have cared. All we needed were our friends from the neighborhood, a couple of stray dogs, a pocket knife, a lighter, a pack of bubblegum, and a box of pop tarts and we could survive for a very long time,” she said.

She takes pride in her childhood and how her generation learned to survive. At the end of the video, she says, “Gen x will keep pushing back against that envelope of old age. We refuse to grow up. Sure we have back pain but it is the spirit that overcomes it. We do life with our ‘I don’t give a f**k’ attitude and we take better care of ourselves. Maybe that’s the secret to youth though. It's the ‘I don’t give a f**k’ attitude.” 

The video got over 176K views and several others agreed with Sherri's thoughts. A person related to Sherri that they would go to school unsupervised. @tessbarber143 commented, "I remember walking a block and a half to kindergarten by myself. I was 5. And yes, I did cross a busy street." @tredgenx commented, "You are so on point I worked at a restaurant at 12."

You can follow Slim Sherri (@therealslimsherri) on TikTok for more unfiltered Gen X humor.