Lenny

This is Lenny. Lenny Leonard from "The Simpsons," for those of you who've never watched an episode of the long-running Fox cartoon of the same name.

Lenny Leonard doesn't really have a thing to do with what we're talking about here-- we're just going to borrow his name and his image. Oh, and the coffee mug he is holding with his name on it; for the sake of this essay, we will pretend it's a Starbucks mug.

“Lennys” is going to be the new nickname I’m coining for Millennials. "Why," you might ask? Why on Earth (or the Moon or Mars, for that matter) would I call a Millennial a cartoon charter from "The Simpsons?" Well, I'm glad you were wondering this. Lenny, as I'm using the name here, is short for "MilLENNIals." Get it? GET IT? Lol. Hang on a second and I'll explain my logic, and hopefully you'll see the inanity of it all too...

Lately, there's been a strange trend on social media of Millennials responding to Baby Boomer comments that they don't care for with the nickname "Boomer."

Somehow, they think it’s insulting, though for the life of me I cannot fathom why (probably because I am in fact a Boomer).

In fairness, I can't really say that I blame them, as Boomers have been putting Lennys (see how that worked?) down on social media for a long time, blaming them for everything from tanking the housing market to killing diamond sales to killing the napkin industry off with one hand whilst doing in the gold industry with the other. Not to mention golf, marmalade, and gyms.

I suppose every generation goes through a similar right of passage. After all, it's literally one generation replacing another, so of course there's going to be some tension in that dynamic. It's a survival of the fittest-type struggle that's been going on since the dawn of time, across all species. And blah blah blah.

Sorry about that; as a Boomer I can be long-winded with my own writing while I criticize my Slennys (Student Millennials) for doing the same thing.

Anyway, long story short, Boomers are now charged with calling Millennials Lennys in response, so that they too can be puzzled by a really vacuous nickname that doesn’t make any sense and leaves the intended recipient scratching their heads in befuddlement.

© Ray Cattie