Little Episode Big Personality

This week, Strangers With Kittens is celebrating National Gen X Day with a minisode. An episode that combines some of our favorite moments on the show. 

Revisit clips with guests: Chris Shahnahian, Vijai Nathan, Cynthia Levin, and Becky Veduccio. 

Strangers With Kittens returns to their regular scheduled programming next week! 

Transcript

Eileen Kelly (00:21)
us didn't grow up the way we did and people after us didn't grow up the way we did. People before us, gender roles were much more rigid and there was usually a

a mother at home or someone at home and supervision. And then after us, they were like, ⁓ there needs to be childcare. There needs to be preschool. There needs to be aftercare, clubs, scheduling. But for us, it was just good luck.

Eileen Kelly (00:53)
I'm loving your, do you have a turtleneck on or like a track with stripes on the, I love it.

Cynthia Levin (00:56)
I do, I do. It's a turtleneck. It's not a tracksuit. Yeah. It's, you know, it hit me that I'm like,

I'm dressed seventies. I'm dressed Gen X. I'm like, even my hair, my glass. It's so funny. hit me. Total accident. This is how I dress normally. This is how I dress.

Eileen Kelly (01:06)
You are so 70s in the coolest possible way. It's so fabulous. It's the, it's the best era.

Eileen Kelly (01:18)
We had a brown jug in our basement.

that wasn't labeled, but everyone, know, the family knew to stay away from it because it was chlordane. Chlordane. It's like the most toxic chemical.

And we had a jug of it. And if we had, I don't know, ants or something, my dad would pour it around the outside foundation of the house because it would kill everything. And I mean,

everything. And of course anything in the dirt goes into the groundwater so everyone's drinking that shit. And I mean I think like my brother might have gotten rid of it finally because my dad just thought it was the greatest. And it's like talk about killing a fly with a sledgehammer. It's like I think it's overkill. I don't I don't think you have to poison every living

Becky Veduccio (02:14)
one time I went in the basement and I'm not making this up. There was a bag of hair. There was a bag of hair and it said 60 year old man one week.

Eileen Kelly (02:15)
Awwww

Becky Veduccio (02:30)
And I go, what is that? He's like, I'm trying to invent something for the drain in the shower.

Eileen Kelly (02:31)
Who

Like a like a Draeno or a liquid plumber.

Becky Veduccio (02:41)
Like a thing that would pull hair out of the drain and I go, whose hair is it that bad? He's like, that's mine. And I was like, ⁓

Eileen Kelly (02:45)
Or a snake, yeah.

Eileen Kelly (02:51)
Like there was a kid who broke into our house. I use the term broke in, but we didn't have a lock or even a handle on our front door. So it was basically a swinging door. So broke in is a sort of a, I'm using that term loosely. But,

He was mad at my brother and so he got home before we did. Like he got to our house before we got home from school and then he pounced on my brother. He was hiding behind the front door. And when we came in, he jumped my brother. I was in elementary school. I think my brother might've been in sixth grade and this kid might've been in like eighth and seventh something. And he jumped on my brother and he was just like wailing on him. I remember my brother covering his ears.

just like curled up in the fetal position on the ground covering his ears so his ears didn't get like, he didn't get cauliflower ear. And I ran to the kitchen and got the biggest screwdriver we had and held it by the metal side, like the side that you would touch the screw. And there's that hard resin handle that was kind of like, I feel like it was made out of the same material that phones were made out of back then. It was like indestructible. And I just started pounding him on the head with this.

Handle to get him off my brother and he was so mad and he ran home And then my brother was mad at me like instead of heralding me as the hero that I was he was mad at me and like said he could Fight his own battles, which believed me. He couldn't not not when he got jumped Unexpectedly in his own home. He was he was definitely not holding his

and then the other kid

was mad at me for beating him in the head with a screwdriver. But it's like, what do you expect if you break into somebody's house and jump

Charlie S (04:35)
And yeah, I remember when I was like, probably like around that time, no younger, I was probably like 10. And we were, my friends were playing behind the Little League Park on the rocks and we're playing. And I fell and my butt landed on, because you know, that's where the teenagers drank, their beer bottles and they would, you know, crash their beer bottles.

/eileen (04:53)
Oh, God!

Charlie S (04:55)
And so my butt was like, oh, and I went home and I looked trying to like, get a look at my rear end of the mirror. And there's this huge like chunk. I didn't tell us all. I didn't tell anybody. I found the glass was out.

/eileen (05:05)
Oh my god.

Yeah.

Charlie S (05:10)
Oh,

I had to throw away the I threw away the bloody underwear. I didn't want my mother to see the bloody underwear. And it was it wasn't because I thought I would get in trouble, but it was just this sense of like, you don't need to bother anybody. know,

Eileen Kelly (05:24)
I see it with my kids. Like I'm so happy. I'm so proud of Gen X as a generation because I feel like we broke down so many barriers and we...

took the trauma that we had as kids growing up neglected and kind of feral and figuring out our own way. we have a particular set of skills and that's great. But we don't wish that for younger generations. maybe we're a little more helicoptery than we needed to be, but we made sure that kids coming after us,

maybe didn't need to be on a milk carton. You know I mean? we gotta make some changes here, you know? And I feel like it's the same thing for that kind of stuff, like celebrating other cultures and just accepting everyone, whether it's like body positivity or everything. Like I see what my kids are growing up with now and I'm so happy and I'm also a little sad for young me.

Vijai (06:20)
Yeah.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

Eileen Kelly (06:26)
You know, I

mean, it's yeah, like I can't help it. I'm really glad for them. But there's a little part of me that's like. You know.

Vijai (06:34)
⁓ but we, but I think you're right. We are who we are. And I do think that because of how we were parented and how we then kind of tried to overcompensate for that, kids are just a little weak, maybe not as, not as resilient as we are. Yeah. Like my, like kids are nowadays.

Eileen Kelly (06:52)
For sure. Yeah. For sure.

Vijai (07:02)
just like if you yell at them, they're like, I don't feel safe. And when it was our parents, when it was our parents, it was like, yeah, you're not supposed to feel safe. So.

Eileen Kelly (07:05)
my god, I know.

You're not, just to be

Eileen Kelly (07:13)
But they played that song by Chambalumba.

And my friends and I were like, oh my God, we never would have danced to this song in the nineties. And then we were like, let's go! And it was like the lyrics of like, I get knocked down, but I get up again, then if I'm gonna keep me down. And it's like, fuck yeah! Like you don't even know the half of it! You don't know how many times we've been knocked down and got up again. And here we are.