They were older than most when they learned to yelp. Most people, of most generations, in most of the world's nations, learn to yelp at a young age. Some are born yelping, others learn it when they learn their mother tongue. Yelping, as they say, comes with the territory. But these people, the ones we're talking about - born in the United States at a certain time - they had not learned to yelp. To yelp: open your mouth. Convulse your stomach, as you would before a belch, or before vomiting. Now form a word, a thousand words, but emit none. In place of the words you might attempt, make a sound. The sound is a combination of three sounds. Each of these represents a third of your yelp. First: there is the shrieking sound you might make if you hit your head on the bottom edge of an open kitchen cabinet door. It is sudden, high-pitched, angry. It speaks of the stupidity of pain. Second: there is a whining aspect. Imagine that you have not slept for many days, and after those many days, you are told to run over that hill yonder and back. When you return, you are punched in the sternum. You ask for mercy. They laugh and kill your dog. This is exhaustion. Third: the last factor in your yelp is the moan. The moan is shock in the face of a landslide. Brutality. A flood. Machetes. This portion of your yelp says that you did not think you could be surprised or overwhelmed, but you have been proven wrong. The yelp is efficient. The words, questions and statements that are encompassed in one quick yelp: How could you? How could you? I won't believe it. Stop it now. Please stop it now. Oh God. Oh God. That poor man. Those poor women. Look at her arms. Look at his face. Those bastards. This is not how it should be. Goddamn all this. I give up. No, I will fight. No, I will give up. No, I will fight. But for Americans of a certain age, there had until recently been no yelping. There were many of these words said, and emotions felt, and questions asked, but never had they been concentrated enough - for there must be an overwhelming onslaught of stimuli, gradual and topped off suddenly - to become a yelp. Their parents had yelped, most of them, and certainly their grandparents. But they had not, which made them at once stronger and less strong. There had been some hope that these people would never know the sound we're talking about. But now they and millions of others, Americans of a certain age, have followed the path of their parents and grandparents and billions of others before them. They have learned how to yelp. They cannot forget what it felt like - it burns, it burns - but now they can try to help those who have not yet yelped to live a yelping-free life. This is what we want. This is all that we can do.