MYA

The other day I read how a millennial called cartoonist Peter de Wit (born 1958) a "dinosaur" because of a joke he didn't like. The joke goes like this: a woman happily enters psychiatrist Sigmund's office and tells him that she can translate the poem The hill we climb because she is a woman, black, young and a spoken word artist. Sigmund congratulates her and asks how she is going to do it. Answer, also punch line of the comic: 'I'll throw it through Google translate.'

'Mja.' lectured the millennial, 'I'm not sure I think this is such a successful joke. That whole discussion does not benefit from all kinds of short-handed comments. And certainly not from dinosaurs like Peter de Wit.'

It was more or less my own fault that this reaction existed, as I had cut the comic myself from the newspaper and posted it on Facebook.

'It's a cartoon,' I wrote back. 'A drawn joke. You know, those things that are meant to be funny, for which some illustrators have been shot to pieces by brainwashed extremists in whom any sense of humour and imagination has been beaten to a pulp with the butt of a Kalashnikov.' I removed those sentences. Sitting somewhere between dinosaurs and millennials, I am slowly but surely beginning to learn when I had better silence my inner Freek the Younger and go do something in the garden. Besides, this millennial didn't mean any harm at all. He just wanted, as humourless as he was nuanced, to continue a discussion behind which Peter de Wit's cartoon was, as far as I was concerned, a relatable point.

During an afternoon nap - we young senior citizens have to sleep a lot - I dreamt that I ran into Peter de Wit in the Albert Heijn supermarket - we were both wearing white suits and black mouth caps. I asked the cartoonist what he thought. 'Mja,' said the cartoonist, who by the way turned out to have a long reptilian tail: 'When I see a millenial I always think of surprise chocolate eggs. Pretty tasty, but melted on top of each other like two Magdeburg half-spheres. They all think they have something unique and unique in them. They do. But when it comes out, it's always plastic again.'