With the pandemic, there was a rumbling about jumping into a strange timeline we hadn't prepared for. Popular media had prepped me instead for soundly plausible things like zombies or finding a good man during a trip back home for the holidays, or how low-rise jeans would always win out against high-waisted jeans.

Now, I'll walk behind someone a decade or more younger than me and catch sight of jeans that remind me of following my mom around in K-Mart when I was 7.

But part of the timeline jump that shifted was just in the explosion of things that felt bizarre to say but became normalized. It started with lamenting that I forgot to charge my watch and would need to rely on my phone for the time. Suddenly, it seemed a whole cadre of things required my electric responsibility. It's Sunday night. Are my pen, notebook, toothbrush and doorbell all charged for the week?

That said, "Back to the Future" did warn me. I'll likely have to charge my jacket before long so that it can auto dry. While you've been able to buy jackets with heaters for a while, you'd have to belong to certain groups to access that: biker, construction worker, Norwegian.

Even my car has implemented a new language to inform me of its complaints. Instead of loud engines and rattles, my car demurely pops up what I've delightfully heard referred to as car emojis.

"Betsy is cold and unpleased," I'll tell the kids as we head to school. "In fact, she's quite a..." as I point to the symbol, and the kids groan for the umpteenth time, "snowflake." Then I pat the dash and tell her she's built for hard times, and it'll be okay.

How we talk about things or change the words we relate to concepts that existed previously, shapes our reality. Devastating for me and my browsing for topics, the Pew Research Center announced in May that they'd stop reporting on generations, unless data can be compared to solid data for the same age cohort in the past.

"When doing this kind of research, the question isn't whether young adults today are different from middle-aged or older adults today," said Kim Parker, director of social trends research at Pew Research Center. "The question is whether young adults today are different from young adults at some specific point in the past."

Parker explained that complications also came from the structure of how survey data was collected 30 years ago, or more, to today. "Our internal testing showed that on many topics, respondents answer questions differently depending on the way they're being interviewed," she said.

Sounds about right. Send me a text; I'll answer your survey while waiting for a child to complete whatever extracurricular I'm biding my time at that day.

But perhaps we should still look to a decade, as Forbes's Sheila Callaham suggests. "The trivial assignment of characteristics to age cohorts is misleading and can lead to generation-bashing and finger-pointing, creating mistrust, disengagement, and talent loss," she said.

I agree with Pew's shift in speaking about generational trends more comparatively, particularly since there's a generation shift even in the traditional millennial cohort. As an elder millennial who was lucky enough to buy a house with a low interest rate and who paid off student loans quickly, I will have a different road to walk than one born a few years after who is stuck with stifling interest rates on both a mortgage and for student loans.

Regardless of where we fall on the spectrum, we'll still join Gen X on the bench on that road, watching Gen Z briskly walking into the gloom of aging with a feral Gen Alpha hot on their heels.

Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at cassie@mcclurepublications.com. To find out more about Cassie McClure and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Nathan Dumlao at Unsplash