Congirl vs Cavegirl

Billy Morris was my first boyfriend. We were 12, and while it seems ridiculous to me now that I felt he deserved the lofty title of "boyfriend" way back when, turns out I learned more about life from Billy than I was consciously aware of at the time. In fact, my strangely clear memories of him have been helping me dismantle some pretty big social and biological constructs in recent months. Just what do I think I know? Well, before I answer that, I need to highlight the most important part of my story about Billy — The year it happened. It was 1982, which means I was born into the generational age-group known as "X-er"...and that means I barely give a bleep about what you think I know. X-er is one of the generational catch-phrases that attempt to describe massive swaths of the American public like Baby-Boomer, Millennial and iGen. Japan, Australia and many other countries have their own descriptive names for these groups, but it all boils down to how each generatio...

Have you seen the movie "Inside Out?" It's a Disney/Pixar production about a girl named Riley who moves to a new town. The story focuses on how her five strongest emotions -- joy, sadness, anger, disgust and fear -- help her cope with all the changes she experiences with the move. The five are housed in a sort of control tower inside her head. However, if this setting were more biologically accurate, disgust and fear would be located in a separate control tower closer to the older "center" of Riley's brain. That is because disgust and fear have helped curtail human behavior for many thousands of years longer than our "newer" emotions and essentially have the power to override how we react to things. I find this revelation fascinating. In fact, I have created some characters of my own which I use to investigate what life might have been like many thousands of years ago. In this chapter of their story, cave dwellers Jerome and Claire follow their emo...