Nostalgia - Is there bad nostalgia?

What is it about nostalgia that is so appealing to people? I receive several emails a day loaded with reminiscing about how much better it used to be. It’s not just about the old days either. Sometimes it’s about the idyllic life those of us had that were raised in really small towns. It usually goes like this.

• We used to wallow in the mud out back after a rain storm, but we never got colds.
• Mama never washed the lettuce because we didn’t know what a pesticide was.
• Vaccines? What for? We believed that if you expose yourself to stuff, then your body will build up its own disease fightin’ arsenal.
• If I did something bad and my momma wasn’t home, then the neighbor lady would give me a lickin’ and it was just fine. No one got sued for child abuse.
• At school, the first thing you did was pledge allegiance and say a prayer. You didn’t worry if there were Buddhists, or Jews or Muslims or freakin’ atheists in the class you just bowed your head and did it.
• You could drive down Main Street drinkin’ a cold one, and if the policeman stopped you, he called your folks and confiscated your beer. You got a beatin’, but rarely arrested.
• We used to make out in the back seat of a car and if we were lucky we got a hand under the sweater. We didn’t have sex on the first date, film it, and show it off to the whole town!
• If someone did get knocked up, they did the right thing. They either got married or went to Edna Gladney’s for a few months.
• If somebody got a little rambunctious and broke someone else’s nose or window, nobody called in a psychiatrist. You just taught the one with the broken nose to fight better.

I get it. It used to be a lot different, and seemingly less complicated than the world we live in now. How could it not be with all the technological advances in just the last 20 years alone, much less in the last 40 years? The changes have been staggering when you start looking back. TV remote controls have been around a long time, but I remember always laying on the floor fairly close to the TV in our den, because I was the remote. Cell phones? What about dial phones? I remember picking up the phone and waiting for the operator and telling her, “this is 74J, can you connect me with 64F?” And away we go! See, how easy it is to slip into nostalgia mode.

Even my grandsons, who are both 14, were talking at their 8th grade promotion about how much had changed since they were in grammar school. “Remember when we could only talk on our cell phones and not even text or down load videos?” We start reminiscing very early in life apparently. Shouldn’t there be an age limit for engaging in nostalgia? I guess it feels good no matter how old you are.

But these walks down memory lane tend to be very selective. These “good old days” lists are by nature very linear and narrow. Somehow all the negative experiences are filtered out by our longing to go back and feel those simpler, carefree feelings.

I remember at 14, driving my aqua and white '55 Belvedere down the lake road, with the windows down, on a sunny summer day with the Beatles harmonizing with my day. It was a little bit of heaven.

I remember lying out down in a furrow between rows of cotton at night, watching the sky and wondering what all that vastness was and how did it all fit together. Some of my best sense-memories are of laying in a cotton field with a couple of friends in the adjacent rows echoing or maybe challenging my musings about the universe. They were truly wonderful times. Of course, when you are young, so many things just seem to be there explicitly for your pleasure and enjoyment.

But for a lot of the recollections on the “how it used to be” list”, it seems a little revisionist. Often times I look at the distribution lists for these type emails and some particular memories come back to me that are not pleasant at all. Some of the memories elicited by some of those names make me wish there had been psychiatrists involved; for them and for me.

I remember the trauma of learning that one of the kids that rode the school bus into town from County Line had been hit by a car, speeding down the farm road. He was killed instantly. I didn’t know him well, but I still wept uncontrollably at his funeral. Dying so young with so much potential seemed like it should be impossible. God should have made a rule. No really young, really smart, really loving child shall die. When you’re young, hell even when your old, the mysterious ways of a Creator are really confusing sometimes..

I remember seeing some of the senior boys on our football team one fall Friday, during lunch break, capturing a cat. We were in a car behind them. The next thing I knew they had thrown the cat out the window over the top of the car into a ditch. They did this several times. The cat just seemed frightened, not hurt. No harm no foul; until one of them jumped out and stomped the cat to death.

I remember being so furious, I was shaking. But I went to class in sort of a robotic stupor; Mrs. Williams’ 11th grade English class. She looked at me and asked me, “What’s wrong”? I looked up from my desk and said, “Why”? She said, “Because you’re crying”. I was so freaked out I didn’t even realize I was crying.

I remember another lunch a couple of days after I had gotten my ride repainted. My Uncle Floyd was a great mechanic. He loved cars and engines. He built a dragster from scratch once. That’s how cool he was. The only thing I had ever built from scratch was a chocolate cake. (Of course I was 9 at the time, so I was definitely a cooking prodigy).

Anyway, I had bought this really ugly ‘62 Plymouth Plaza. The color was sort of a cross between beige and Pepto-Bismol. I took it to my My Uncle Floyd and said, “What do you think”? He went down to the Chevrolet dealership and got some Aztec Bronze paint and two weeks later I got back a bitchin’ two tone paint job that drew gasps and jealous stares from the parking lot crowd at school.

Two days later when I and some friends came back from lunch, those same cretin cat killers called me over. They made some disparaging remarks about my car; something really intelligent like, “you think you’re hot shit? See how hot this is.” Two of them held my arms while one smeared a crushed jalapeno pepper on my face and in my eyes. There I was again in Mrs. Williams English class crying. But this time it was not because I was in shock. It was because of the damn jalapeno. It’s a wonder I still like Mexican food, and I do like it spicy. When I walked out to my car after school that day, someone had carved in very small letter, “Fuck you” on the left rear fender. I took it straight to Uncle Floyd and he patched it. But the damage was done. Sometimes, you are in the sights of a particularly warped individual and there is no escape.

You know that saying that in a small town everybody knows your business. I think some of the families in our little town were lucky to be in our little town where everybody knew their business. It may have been that hometown surveillance that kept them being merely dysfunctional and not criminal. Without community supervision, I think some of our citizens would have ended up in prison, instead of detention. I know some of them could have benefited from a locked mental facility and some good psychotropic medication.

Oh well. Never mind. Wasn’t it great back then?