excerpt: punk kids

p 212 "... some people, me included, believe that punk is just the most recent manifestation of this, this spirit, this feeling, you know, that things aren't right and that in fact things are so wrong that the only thing we can do is to say Fuck It, over and over again, really loud, until someone stops us."
"Yes," Bobby says quietly, his face glowing with an almost religious fervor under his spiked hair. "Yes."

p 213-14 "I was thinking about those kids. The Baby Punks."
"Oh, yeah. What about them?"
"I was trying to figure out what would cause that kid--"
"Bobby."
"--Bobby, to revert, to latch on to music that was made the year he was born...."
"Well, I was really into the Beatles," Clare points out. "They broke up the year before I was born."
"Yeah, well, what is that about? I mean, you should have been swooning over Depeche Mode, or Sting or somebody. Bobby and his girlfriend ought to be listening to the Cure if they want to dress up. But instead they've stumbled into this thing, punk, that they don't know anything about--"
"I'm sure it's mostly to annoy their parents. Laura was telling me that her dad won't let Jodie leave the house dressed like that. She puts everything in her backpack and changes in the ladies' room at school," says Clare.
"But that's what everybody did, back when. I mean, it's about asserting your individualism, I understand that, but why are they asserting the individualism of 1977? They ought to be wearing plaid flannel."
"Why do you care?" Clare says.
"It depresses me. It's a reminder that the moment I belonged to is dead, and not just dead, but forgotten. None of this stuff ever gets played on the radio, I can't figure out why. It's like it never happened. That's why I get excited when I see little kids pretending to be punks, because I don't want it all to just disappear."