“You’ve got it easy,” says the baby boomer in the home they bought for $200,000 at 27 years old

“with your internet and mobile phones!” it says waving a college diploma through the air like a flag.

“Your generation…” the baby boomer huffs, “All you do is smoke weed and get drunk!”

It stomps its feet in frustration

It eats xanax like candy

Pill after

Pill after

Pill

Its IV drips in melancholy

I look up in acknowledgment from my reality

My future in a pile of papers

College essays

Scholarships

Financial aid

Can I even apply for this?

Can my parents even afford this?

No.

Probably not.

They’ve got 2 kids after me to support…

“Back in my day we got summer jobs and paid all our student loans off” the baby boomer boasts, chest puffed out proudly.

“How are we supposed to trust your generation with a government? With an entire country?” The baby boomer yells while politicians sip wine out of crystal glasses and watch nuclear bombs raze civilizations like crude christmas lights.

“You’re such a waste of youth! Why I couldn’t even name all of the things I’d do if I were young again” the baby boomer wheezes dreamly.

It's so sickly

So cancerous

“Tell me why. Why must your generation victimize itself?” asks the baby boomer.

I place my pen upon my teetering stack of papers.

“My generation was not raised to stand and speak

We were raised to sit!

To be quiet!

Criss-Cross applesauce

Use your ears and listen

We were born on a pre-paved path and like sheep

We follow it

We were raised in a school system that kills creativity

and teaches us very little life skills

I wasn't taught how to pay taxes

but talk to me about the size of the fallopian tube!

I wasn't taught about my basic human rights!

Did you know there are 30 of them?

I wasn’t taught the laws for the country I live in

At 18 I will be asked to vote in a system that I know nothing about.

I wasn’t taught about medicine

or recognizing mental disorders

But I know how the Marie Antoinette and her family were killed during the French revolution.

It's been ingrained into my generation that sex will ruin your life

Abstinence is the only way.

But no one ever told me what to do about having a kid when I actually want one.

Seriously

I’ve learned more about the real world from

TV

Movies

or books

than almost any class I’ve taken

And they tell us TV will rot your brain

Don’t belittle the generation that you raised

In the economy you shaped

Were all just trying to get by!”

I scream

It felt so good to scream

I pant

relieved and then I look up

and meet the baby boomers weakening gaze

It says nothing

Only wheezes

realizing the value of oxygen

I continue filling out my future

line by line

listening to the rapidly slowing beep of the baby boomers heart monitor

-J.W.