An Interview with Grandma McKenzie

When I was asked to interview someone about their life during a historic time period, I knew I wanted to do an interview with my Grandma McKenzie, who was a young adult and a teenager during the Unprecedented Times (late 2010s - 2020s). She’ll be turning 102 this year and still suffers from what my Dad calls “brainrot”, which I learned is an old fashioned term used to describe people who spent too much time on cell phones.

To help her remember the good old days, my Dad and I found a Tik Tok nostalgia compilation on my holophone to play for her, and it really worked! Each audio helped spark memories for her, and I got to learn all sorts of things about what her life was like back then. Here’s a quick breakdown of some of the questions I asked and her responses!

Q: What year were you born?

A: 2002— cue Jurassic Park theme.

Q: Where did you grow up?

A: Well, I grew up in New Jersey, but after it started sinking, your grandpa and I moved out here to Kansas. We did luck out though, we’re still by the shore!

Q: What was your favorite subject in school?

A: It was math, I fear. Hot take, fr, don’t cancel me.

Q: What did you and your friends do for fun?

A: I didn’t actually get a graduation or a prom, which is like so unfair, but me and my friends would sit in Target parking lots to spill the tea or scroll on our phones together.

Q: When did you meet my Grandpa?

A: We met in college on an app called Hinge. He had the best answers to the prompt on his profile— we loved all the same things, dogs, pizza, music— and he wasn’t a dry texter, like at all. Sometimes he gave me too much information tbh, like, I didn’t need to know all that. We met up and had our first date at Applebee’s and I deleted the app later that night.

Q: What was your first job?

A: I ran social media for our local pizzeria in high school, but after college, I worked for a while as an aerospace engineer. It was difficult to afford everything for a while, we’d just bought our house with Klarna, and your grandpa wasn’t getting as many podcast appearances as he used to. We still had his trick shot channel, but I had to make a career change, and luckily, one of my get-ready-with-me videos blew up and I became a full time niche micro-influencer. 

Q: Thoughts on the politics of the time?

A: Oop—

Q: What’s something you miss about that era?

A: Human art and Instagram create mode.

Getting to hear from Grandma McKenzie was really enlightening. I know a lot more about my family history as well as what life was like back then. It sounds like growing up during that era was pretty complicated. I’m definitely glad that I live in the present. We’ve still got a lot to figure out, but I wouldn’t want to miss out on same day drone delivery!