May 2, 2006
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REMEMBERING NOSTALGIA
I saw an article yesterday entitled “A nostalgic look at the 90’s.” The 90’s were yesterday. I still write 1998 when I make out checks. How the hell am I supposed to be nostalgic about a decade most of my wardrobe is still from?
I understand that nostalgia is big business. I also understand that it’s fun to reminisce about what the world was like when you were young. I think, however, that a law should be passed that you must be older than 16 to wax philosophical about the “good old days.”
I ran across one of those “Do you remember when” lists on someone’s blog a couple of weeks ago. This one was apparently written by a toddler because it actually had the following entries: “Do you remember when computers had floppy drives?” and “Do you remember when people rented VHS tapes instead of DVD’s?” I still have a rented VHS copy of the movie “Office Space” that I haven’t gotten around to taking back to the video store yet.
If you talk about where you were when you heard that Jennifer Anniston and Brad Pitt were breaking up instead of where you were when Kennedy was assassinated, please keep your nostalgic musings to yourself; you’re making the rest of us feel old.
I think I’ve earned the right to be nostalgic. I entered Jr. High in the fall of 1969 and I graduated from college in the spring of 1980, so the 70’s are “my” decade. And no…I don’t think Aston Kutcher is an accurate representation of those of us who actually grew up with print polyester shirts, the Vietnam War, and Credence Clearwater Revival.
As a child of the 70’s, I was buying records when James Taylor first sang “Fire and Rain.” I was watching TV when Saturday Night Live first aired and Dan Ackroyd uttered the immortal words; “Jane, you ignorant slut.” I put up a “Disco Sucks” poster in my dorm room window, and I voted for Jimmy Carter for president the year I turned 18.
Of course, even if I have earned the right to be nostalgic, I have to be careful about becoming one of those crotchety old men who play checkers at the Elk’s lodge and talk about the bad winter of ’23.
I don’t think I ever told my son that I had to walk ten miles to school in the snow in the middle of July, but I do think I told him the story about our family not owning a color TV until I was in High School each and every time he asked me to purchase something electronic for him.
What can I say…those were the good old days.
Comments (28)
Hey, wasn’t it Dan Ackroyd who said: “Jane, you ignornat slut?”~
I absolutely hated disco~still do~
I entered Junior High in 1966~You don’t hear that word so much anymore~Junior High~it’s all middle school now~I wonder why the need to change the word when the concept remains the same?
Wow, you’re right; it was Ackroyd. I guess I’m getting so old my memory is fading. I’m going to have to go edit that.
I was a college graduate when SNL first went on the air. Thanks for helping me feel really old today.
Floppy drives? My first encounter with a computer involved punch cards!
Graduated highschool 1978, yep it’s my decade too.
I make about 200 dollars a month hustling old folks at checkers down at the elk’s lodge. My secret is to yell “LOOK ITS MAMIE VAN DOREN!” As soon as they turn around I spin the board.
Thats funny, I remember when we got our first microwave. It was a big deal in our house and it took a couple of weeks before Mom realized that all the hub-bub wasnt quite true and you really couldnt cook EVERYTHING in the microwave. It didnt take long for our futuristic microwave to become an oversized appliance for re-heating leftovers.
wow…. those were the days. “jone, you ignorant slut” was tv history and i saw it happen!
I graduated HS the same year you graduated college. Does that make me a young’un? Heehee! My son just turned 20 and I think it’s funny too when his friends come over and they talk about the ‘good old days’ of HS!
Haha, you’re older than me!
Hey, I’ve gotta laugh when I can. People older than I am are becoming harder and harder to find! I know what you mean, though. I was telling my son that when I graduated from high school, it was very hard to keep in contact with people because there were no cell phones, no instant messaging, etc., and long distance calling was very expensive and something you did only very rarely. It was snail mail or forget it! He asked me if they brought the mail to the post office on horseback (he WAS kidding, lol)!
Kathi
Class of ’77 chiming in. Yes, I remember it well…..ok, some of it, anyway. Roseann Rosannadanna. When SNL was funny.
This post and these comments crack me up! lol As with someone up above, I remember our first micro wave, we put EVERYTHING in it! lol As a child of the 80′s I remember when MTV came out, the popular videos then were songs like “Legs” by ZZ Top and Phil Collins “Can’t Hurry Love.” lol I suppose I can reminisce about dressing like Cyndi Lauper and the kids at school wearing the red zippered Jackets like Michael Jackson….YIKES!! More than half of my video collection is VHS tapes because we just can’t make ourselves part with them! lol I can honestly say that the year you started junior high was the same year I was born! lol (sorry) But yeah…it’s funny now cause many of these kids don’t have a clue who Popeye is or what Woolco is! That’s scarey! lol Hope your doing great! This was a funny post.
OK, so that makes you about two years older than I am…..another child of the 60′s and 70′s. A few years back I had to remind my stepdaughter that answering machines didn’t used to exist. And how many of us can honestly say we once used a slide rule (at least until I convinced my boyfriend to loan me his newfangled and very expensive calculator)?
Wow. I defintely seem to be one of your younger readers. You guys are making me feel terribly immature.
My computer still has a floppy drive! I ordered it that way. I like floppy drives.
Anyway, I’m young enough that I don’t have much to look back on. I’ll be going into high school next year and the only thing I’m really nostalgic about is elementary school.
Repost this is twenty years and I’ll have something to say.
I bought my husband a VCR for Christmas in 1983. It cost $365.00 which in 2006 dollars is about $6 million. When I was in elementary school in the late 60s, we still had a party line on the telephone. We shared with an old lady names Alma who lived down the road. Sometimes I would listen in. Do you suppose George Bush had a party line when he was a kid?
Yes those were the good old days. The other day I wrote a check out at the store and put the year 1987. I said.. “Dam that musta been a good year”
“Do you suppose George Bush had a party line when he was a kid?” –toots10
That made me laugh.
It never ceases to crack me up when some 25 year old says “Remember the 80′s?” I say that if they were BORN in the 80′s, they are disqualified from ever saying that. I was born in ’71 and I know that I really can’t remember much of the 70′s. (I remember a couple events in ’79….!)
Also, if someone that much younger than me CAN’T remember what they were doing when Mt St Helen’s exploded, then they are also disqualified. (The mountain is only a few hours from me, so I totally remember it!)
We didn’t get colour TV until I was in grade eight. And we had our first microwave when I was in high school. My mom tried to bake cakes and cook roasts in it.
Were we separated at birth ? Not only do I remember “Fire and Rain”, but I’m pretty sure I could still lay hands on my copy of Sweet Baby James. I also voted for Carter at age 18, in addition to working on his campaign and getting rooked into being the Democratic poll watcher for an east side (ie: rich) precinct. I sat thumbing through handwritten index cards, while my counterpart flipped the pages of his computer printout. First political lesson. And I still refer to the original SNL as “the days when the show was good”.
Back up a decade. Did you also get to stay up late to watch the Beatles on Ed Sullivan ?
we had cable tv in my house from my earliest memories. my grandma had a different cable system than we did. what i remember is we got wpix from new york and all the philly channels, but grandma got wor from new york and wgn from chicago. that was when i was very little, though. by the time i was 10 or so, we all had the same cable company. my cousins got home box when it first came out (i just can’t get used to calling it HBO) and i watched the very first sports center broadcast on espn and saw the mtv video. this was one of the few perks of living in the middle of nowhere (and miles down the road from the first cable system).
I figure anybody who writes stuff like that is too young for me to be reading.
LOL Damn you ARE old…hehehe
I remember when diapers were really large cotton hankies you had to fold and pin – not velcro shorts 
I CAN say that your entry makes me feel extraordinarily young… : ) thanks for that.
RYC: Woohoooo That’s the “LaBouff” way! lol
I graduated from college in 1976…I remember listening to my 8 tracks in the car as I would drive back and forth from my home In Pensacola to my college in AL…yep, you read that right…8 track tapes…I was so damn cool back then!
Man….I feel really old now…thanks a lot!
RYC: I thought they were paying me to be on xanga. They call it excessive internet usage, I consider it keeping the phone lines warmed up.
RYC: your right we all had a social disease, yuch for us.