They call us Millenials. I've heard us called Twixters, too. We're the ones born between '80 and '90. We're the kids of America.

We are a generation defined by gadgets, by iPods, by cell phones, by laptops, by wireless signals. We used to argue that we had no war to define us like the WWI generation, or the WWII generation, or the Vietnam generation, but that isn't true anymore, regardless of if you are for or against the United States' involvement in matters outside our borders. We combine letters and numbers in an effort to communicate in a short hand written language via e-mail, via text, via IM, typing things like, "I M gr8! How R U?" There have been articles concerning the changes in the way we think as a result, in the way we read. As a user of Google and the internet, we have been trained to scan documents, that the majority of us no longer read lengthy newspaper articles or books, but rather sift through webpages, moving on to the next Wikipedia article when we grow tired or bored or both. The majority of us are spoiled, earning trophies in our little leagues and our Girl Scout troops, even if we lost the game or didn't sell the most cookies. We were all told we were special, that we could be whatever we wanted to be - thanks, baby boomer parents, because we all really do agree with you. We all proclaim our own personal specialness through profiles courtesy of our friend Tom at MySpace or that one kid that stole that one idea while he attended that one college (sorry for the lack of detail - I just skimmed the newspaper article about him) who provided us with the Big Brother-like applications and mini-feeds of Facebook. We download most of our music, though there are some suave, cool, hip cats out there who are retro rad and buy vinyl for their record players. Many of us have smoked marijuana and the majority of us who haven't are more worried about getting in trouble for smoking it rather than the ill health effects the government warned the country about when our grandparents were our age. We eat fast food at least once a week and the majority of us eat it more than once a week. We know commercial jingles by heart. Danny Tanner was our favorite TV dad. We change careers many times during the years, recognizing that our employers hold as much loyalty to us as we hold to them. We have a special place in our hearts for the reality shows we say we don't watch even though we do (Rock of Love anyone?). We've taken a college class, and so many of us have college degrees. We started having sex earlier than our parents. We taught our parents about Gmail. We cringe at the idea of drinking water from the tap and have a favorite type of bottled water.

I generalize too much, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a Twixter that didn't agree with at least one of those sentences. I'm not sure what kind of conclusions can be drawn from the above. Maybe it's too early to draw any conclusions about us yet - maybe you have to wait until we're all grown up, until we're middle-aged.

I sometimes draw my own generalized conclusions, though, causing me to get angry with people my age. I feel like many of us don't read enough, that we watch too much TV, that we spend too much time emailing and texting, that we can be selfish and spoiled, and that we care more about voting for our favorite American Idol than we do voting for our favorite state representative. When I found out the majority of the people in my graduating high school class declared the DaVinci Code as their favorite book, I nearly vomited.

I will say, though, that we are a relentless generation that doesn't take much shit. We will complain to your supervisor. We will argue our agendas to all those who don't agree. We will storm out of a job if treated poorly. We are not a generation to piss off. We are special individuals who will fight for the right to be special individuals. And you might not like our loud music. You might not like that we've all gotten tattoos. But we are a generation that stuck up for our own personal selves, our own personal ideas, and the world around us told us that was okay from an early age. I mean, didn't you guys hear? Mr. Rogers wanted to be our neighbor.