How the aughts’ touchstones touched us

For today’s college seniors, the aughts will be the decade that defined you.

The next one will also be important: Most of you will get married and have kids. But although we always grow and change over the years, personalities are shaped more when people are in their teens and early 20s than at any other point in life.

In this decade, we got through middle school, where we endured awkward sock-hops – both sexes were mostly afraid to touch each other back then – and horrors like mandatory P.E.

We watched the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election on the couch with our parents, not fully understanding its implications. We sat breathless after morning I-STEP exams while planes crashed and towers tumbled on TV.

Then we went to high school, where we (mostly) conquered our fear of the opposite sex.

The dances were better this time around, especially that big one at the end, and we could drive to them. It was probably here that we formed our first political views, most of which were shaped by the first president whose policies we had the mental maturity to care about, George W. Bush.

And although we would always be changing our minds, we developed religious beliefs and philosophies about life, and we started to map out our tastes in everything from music to movies to literature.

It was probably also here that we had our first loves, most of whom were then lost and forgotten, but who undoubtedly left an imprint of themselves on our future romantic endeavors.

Soon enough we went to college and tasted freedom – from parents, from principles and from most of the rules they’d set for us. We passed the magical drinking age and finally felt like real.

But with all that freedom, somehow we found ourselves constrained by new worries. College drained our bank accounts, so we had to work. Car payments, rent payments, grocery payments and other adult worries started to cloud our horizon. 

We understood the decade’s last election much better than its first, and many of us voted for change.

Will our own lives change as smoothly?