Back When

Seems like nobody wants to live here anymore. Or live now anymore. I mean, my social media is overrun with posts lamenting 'Back when we were in school...' and 'Kids these days...' and fill in the blanks.

Most of it is about how much better everything was X-number of years ago depending on the age and 'Gen' of the poster. I will admit it's a little tough for me to hear 20-somethings talk about 'back in the day' when I have a pair of Technics speakers twice as old as they are but it's all perspective. Objects in their rearview mirrors actually are closer than they appear.

Maybe it's just nostalgia for what we like to think of as easier, happier days but if you really take a hard look and admit it, nothing much really changes. The crisis of the moment is different and the names change but life is and always has been complicated and confusing in contrast with the carefree and happy-go-lucky daydreams so many seem to wish for and claim to remember. Everyone's past is filled with good and bad even if they choose not to remember it that way. 

My own rear-view mirror is pretty cracked and I've lied to myself about enough that unarguably true memories are hard to come by. I suspect we all do that to protect ourselves from all that junk back there that would hurt if we poked at it too much.

It's just human nature to look for simplicity amid complexity. 'Back when we were kids' seems understandable when so much of the present seems incomprehensible. Us 'Boomers' are very susceptible to this.  

The music was better. The cars were better. Everything was better. Except it really wasn't. Cars that 'lasted forever' didn't. 50 grand was high mileage and on top of that, a whole lot of them had a tendency to kill their occupants in a crash. Elvis was a societal menace as was all that rock-and-roll 'devil music'. The Beatles were the end of civilization as we knew it. Hendrix was evil incarnate.

True as well that prices were very low compared to now but so was income. You could buy gas for 55 cents a gallon when I started driving in '76 but I only made about 20 bucks a week working every day after school and on weekends. It was still a stretch to fill the tank, go skating, eat and make it till next payday.
Mom stayed home and Dad worked just like the memes tell it but he worked all the time and only had Thursday and Sunday off for years. It took an enormous toll on him and her both but hey...it was the 60's right so it was all good. 

Every generation looks back through rose-colored glasses and wishes for what seems like simpler times. But at least for me there's never been a time when things were as carefree as all that. I'm not saying it was all bad but I do think it's pretty disingenuous to claim the world was all sunshine just because you once were 16.

That's one that comes up a lot...rewinding to your teens. A wish to go back to high school days. Maybe for some that would be nice but if you're being truly honest with yourself, high school is probably one of the most high-stress times of your life. You can tell yourself that it was great being on the football team or going to the prom or partying in the woods or having a hotrod and all the other 'Glory Days' (sorry Bruce) adventures but I wouldn't go back there even if I could. As everyone does, I have tales to tell from those years and a lot of it was great fun. A lot of it wasn't. And I don't live there anymore. 

The flip side is how tough it was for 'us' compared to how it is for 'these kids'. Everyone knows the cliché, "We walked uphill both ways in a blizzard without shoes to get to school so quit whining about your iPhone." 

At least from my point of view, it isn't that is was so much harder when I was young...just a different hard from now. I wouldn't trade my tough times for Gen X, Y or Z tough times for any amount of money. And even if it was true that they have it easy (which they most certainly do not), who do you think made them that way? Oh yeah...that was us. We came up with participation trophies and helicoptering. We decided they had to go to college and signed them up for the loans. We scheduled them and activitied them and mini-vanned them and lessoned, camped, cliniced and programmed them because we thought we were doing the right thing. 

But now it's their fault they don't live up to our collective memory of what childhood should be. Ain't it funny how their music, their cars, their culture...everything that we brag about in our lives is somehow less for them? Give them a chance and a few years and they'll be just like us. Bragging on whatever becomes the next platforms about how the Alphas don't know how easy they have it. But until then, some of us might want to remember how it feels to be looked down on and back off on the toxic nostalgia a little.

I wonder sometimes that if we try to convince ourselves it was always sunny, we can dance around the parts where it was dark. There's no doubt in my mind that it pays to remember the days when we cried. Tears are truly a valuable part of who we grew up to be after all and to forget that we shed them along the way is to lose a little of yourself. The good and the bad make us who we are.

So when the urge hits to wish for all those wonderful things like rotary phones, rabbit ear televisions with three channels, 45rpm singles, Chevys with fins, stingray bikes, staying out till dark and Saturday mornings with Bugs Bunny...smile a little and remember like we all do. But temper it with a smidge of truth. It's fun to look over our shoulder sometimes and pat ourselves on the back for just getting through it. That's human nature and likely won't ever change.

But don't forget about today. If you live too much in times past, you just might miss a lot of times present.