Nostalgia Revisited

Things seem to get more horrible each day.  Wars, refugees, terrorism.

There's North Korea looming in the distance for us.  For the people of South Korea and Japan, it's on their doorstep.  I grew up in the "duck and cover" times.  Now, those times are back.

Famine.  Refugee camps.

Climate change.  Floods.  Fires. 

So nostalgia is starting to look really good.

Pining for the misty "good old days" is probably as old as humanity is.  But today, we have electronic ways of expressing it.  Just go on Facebook.  Oh, those good old days, when.....

Yeah, right.  And that is because there is no such thing as the 'good old days".  Never has been.

If you, dear reader, are in your 20's and 30's, just wait.  In about 20 or so years that nostalgia mosquito is going to bite you.  One day you'll find yourself frustrated with technology that your 10 year old child uses effortlessly.  Or you'll suddenly realize that TV shows (if they even have TV in 20 years) just aren't made the way they used to be.

That "my childhood is a museum" feeling that I used to get talking to my son will be your feeling, too.

And the thing is:  "those days" weren't ideal.   Not everything was great.  Not everything has gone downhill.

So exactly what it is about the "good old days" that I don't miss? . For my younger readers: you get one point for every item where you actually knew what I was talking about without using the link.  Ready?  Let's go!

1.  Coke-bottle eyeglasses.  If you wear glasses and have poor vision (like me) I am thankful daily for ultra light lenses that don't leave permanent sores on your nose and your ears.  And glass lenses which don't break.

2. Typewriters.  I learned to type on a manual typewriter in Mrs. Gottlieb's 7th grade typing class.  Mrs. Gottlieb was the most feared teacher in my junior high school (an archaic term, by the way).  She put tape on all the keys so you couldn't cheat and find the correct key by glancing down.  

Typewriters?  Well, if you didn't have one, you'd have to pay someone to type your term papers.  It was a complex process:  inserting paper into a roller, rolling it into position, setting the margins, typing, and when you heard a bell, you knew you were about 5 spaces from the end.  Time to hyphenate, then return the carriage to where it started, and type your next sentence.

3.  Carbon Paper.   And  onionskin.
If you needed copies, you just didn't tell your word processing software to print multiple copies.  You took special paper, and inserted carbon paper between each sheet - and heaven help you if you made a typo and had to correct all of those pages.  That was an art form in itself.

4.  Old fashioned medicine.  I'm probably going to get an earful about this.  But, let's put it this way.  I have a medical condition, easily treated today for many people with diet, exercise and medication.  My grandmother died from the same condition in 1937 because there was no treatment.  Things wouldn't have been much better in the 1950's, when I was young.  And there was the time I broke my leg, and they never took X Rays, which resulted in a night of incredible agony I can still remember (especially the part where they wanted me to walk on said leg because "it was only sprained".  No, it was broken in three places.)  Could you see that happening now?  (On the other hand, I miss house calls.  A lot. )

Modern medicine has a lot of problems, no doubt about it.  But enough of us are walking around right now who may not be on this earth if we hadn't expanded on the medical knowledge of the 1950's.

5.  Old style hiking, swimming, and land exercise clothing.  So heavy.  So sweat trapping.  Enough said.

You'll notice I am talking about technology and not culture, not people's attitudes.  There's enough material there for another blog post.

But nostalgia calls.  So let's revisit it today.

Do you feel nostalgic for your childhood or teenage years?   What do you miss about it? What don't you miss about it?