One of my favorite books is an 86-pager by Elizabeth Wurtzel called Radical Sanity: Common Advice for Uncommon Women. I discovered the book in grad school and devoured it in about two hours. The chapters are witty, brief and powerful, with titles like “Don’t Clear the Table at a Dinner Party Unless the Men Get Up to Help Too” and “Enjoy Your Single Years.” It was just the sort of brazen, empowering, feminist literature that a girl in her early twenties, like me, needed at the time. And even though I’m almost 31 and not quite as fervent in my quest to assert my independence as I was back then, I still pick up the book, which is never far from my nightstand, when I need some perspective.

One chapter that has stuck with me over the years is called “Try to Know What the Kids Are Up To.” Wurtzel implores women to accept the inevitability of aging, regardless of how many anti-wrinkle creams we buy or how well we take care of our bodies, and that as we age, it behooves us to know, to some extent, what kids are doing these days. What music are they into? What are they wearing? What slang do they use? (I’m told “beast” is the “it” term right now.)

Why is this important? Well, Wurtzel says because as we age, men and women alike take on this notion that their generation, and all of the accoutrements therein, are superior to the generation coming down the pike.

Here’s an example: I think Looney Tunes, She-Ra and Transformers (before the movie ruined it) are better than Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Bratz; that Def Leppard absolutely kicks the Jonas Brothers’ sissy little butts; and that using the library’s card catalog for book report research is far more respectable than today’s easy access to the World Wide Web with a click of a gem-studded cell phone.

(I remember when my dad got a “car phone” when I was 11. It was clunky with an unwieldy cord that attached it to its ginormous battery pack. I thought it was HOT SHIT.)

So, maybe we tell our version of the I-had-to-walk-six miles-to-school-in-the-snow-uphill-both-ways-with-no-shoes story because we think our kids, nieces and nephews have it too easy, just like our parents and grandparents did to us. Maybe we think they just have bad taste. Whatever it is, it seems like the older folks are inevitably dumbfounded, disdainful, perhaps even outraged at each new fad, whether it’s green hair streaks, ear gauging or piercing a body part once thought of as unpierceable.

So, Wurtzel’s suggestion, that we know a little bit about what’s happening with the kiddos, is really a call to action. Or, rather, inaction. Fads, she says, come and go and the only thing that remains the same is the generation gap. So save the righteous indignation and chillax, already, because just like my pre-pubescent obsession with tight-rolled jeans and teased bangs, whatever “weird” or “tasteless” trend the kids are doing right now will pass too.