Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

This line is part of a widely circulated, admonitory set of “rules” aimed at teenagers, contrasting youthful moral posturing with the everyday responsibilities borne by parents. The speaker’s point is that parents’ apparent dullness is often the result of sacrifice—work, caregiving, and financial support—rather than a lack of vitality. The closing jab (“delousing the closet”) urges self-scrutiny and personal responsibility before condemning an older generation. As a piece of rhetoric it relies on generational reversal: it reframes parental authority as earned through service, and youthful critique as potentially hypocritical when basic self-management is neglected.