A few Advil, a couple of hours of sleep on the flight, and I’m now virtually hangover free. I’m in 6B, a middle seat, which is problematic, as I have a bladder the size of a walnut. Or perhaps I just drink more water than average. Either way, I’m climbing over the little old lady in 6C every 45 minutes for a bathroom run. Still, I’m a happy camper because everything about JetBlue is just better than their competitors. Wider, more comfortable seats (just shy of business class size but at sub-coach prices); cooler snacks (blue potato chips, biscotti); nicer (and better dressed) flight attendants; and cool little TVs on the back of each seat offering live satellite TV. I’m just waiting for them to start a frequent flyer program.

My seat TV is tuned in to the Cartoon Network, currently replaying a vintage episode of the Snorks. I’ve thought about this show intermittently over the past few years, but haven’t actually seen it since the mid ’80s, and I had completely forgotten about some of the central characters: the red octopus/dog thing, the big blue shark, the snork with two snorkels. Cartoons, I realize, are the perfect peer-group litmus test. List off childhood cartoons and anyone within a couple years of age chimes in enthusiastically, while those further apart respond simply with blank stares. Short lived Cartoons like the Snorks provide the most accurate carbon dating – I suspect only my immediate peers could sketch out a Snork on demand. We don’t have a label, my peers and I – too young to be Gen X, but too old to be Gen Y. A strange, transitional group, bridging between the slacker hip of our predecessors and the earnest enthusiasm of the next set of teens. Perhaps we should be called Generation Snork.

Actually, that’s a pretty apt title; the denizens of that sub-oceanic world are as transitional as we are. Far evolved from Gen X’s Smurfs, yet still well short of Gen Y’s Little Mermaid. Sort of a missing link. Generation Snork.