How dare you?
How dare you belittle the technology we’ve grown up with while refusing to attempt to adapt?
     Don’t you remember the bunny ears antennae and the crackling records your parents scoffed and scorned?
How dare you dismiss our culture as inferior?
     Don’t you remember what your own parents called the music keeping you alive—Presley and the Stones and Dylan—don’t you remember how they called it trash?
     Don’t you remember them calling your favorite clothes—those threadbare bell bottoms and floral print collars you wore like armor—weren’t the words they used “ridiculous” and “shameful”?
How dare you mock us for creating our own little niches and societies?
     Don’t you remember the marching band uniforms and the yellowed fan magazines and the communes in poppy fields preaching love not war?
     Don’t you remember your ways of beating back the loneliness?
How can you hate us for expanding upon your inventions?
How dare you disregard our values because they differ from yours?
     Don’t you remember overturning their ideals?
     Don’t you remember lashing out, spitting in the face of authority, shooting up on rebellion and rock and roll and sitting in for peace?
     Don’t you realize you sparked the revolutions that brought us here?
How dare you praise us as “clever” when we agree and wave us off as “too young to understand” when we don’t?
     What do you want from us?
How dare you say we don’t care about the politics around us while you ignore our screaming voices?
     We’re pounding at the walls of Congress, shouting in the streets, begging you to listen: why can’t you hear us?
How dare you claim we don’t put stock in our future when really we’re too scared to even speak?
     Don’t you remember that fear that you’ll grow up to be like them?
How dare you call us disrespectful?
     Don’t you remember your own protests in the streets of Berkeley?
     Don’t you remember marching and slipping flowers in guns and getting dragged off in handcuffs?
     Don’t you remember thinking it was worth it?
How dare you decry us for speaking up and acting out and “disturbing the peace”?
     Don’t you see the blood of Civil Rights still staining your fingers?
     Don’t you remember why you felt the need to scream in a room of enforced silence?
How dare you slap us with the words “kids these days”?
     Didn’t you feel their sting just as keenly when you sat in our place?
     Don’t you remember?
How dare you?