Erin Nonfiction

             The other day I was thinking a lot about the activism from the youth during the 60s: the civil rights movement, war protests. But what I realized was that generation were the baby boomers. I jokingly asked Mr. Leff “What happened? They used to be so cool!” For our generation, baby boomers are the generation that symbolizes the epitome of the old conservatives who benefited from the economy when it was good, got good jobs, cheap education, and were able to live out the “American Dream” while screwing the rest of us over. I think that older generations just need to be reminded that they were once in our position. They were young and had hope for the future, but also wanted to have fun. Our generation is no different than the previous ones during their youth, only the circumstances surrounding our adolescence has changed. I think adults often forget that the world we are growing up in is fundamentally different than the...

My parents didn’t pick out a name for me until after I was born. As the first child, they chose not to find out what gender I would be and therefore had not picked out names in advance (queue the story my mom loves to tell of my dad jumping up and down yelling “it’s a girl it’s a girl!”). I have been told that they were deciding between two names, Erin Kathleen and Mary Catherine. I bet you can figure out which one they picked. My parents have always told me that they mostly were looking at Irish names for me, due to the importance of that to my dad’s family. However, when I asked how they came up with the name Mary, I’ve been told it’s because of the important Marys in my parents’ lives. My grandmother was named Mary, as well as a close friend of both of my parents at our church and my mother’s good friend in college. I’ve told this story to other people and I often get the comment that Mary Katherine was the name of a character on Saturday Night Live in the late 9...