Feeling Nostalgic
Summer is around the corner and it’s one of those seasons that always make me feel a little nostalgic. Time seemed to have felt like it moved slower. With my kids growing up in what feels like a blink of an eye I've noticed myself feeling a little nostalgic My husband and I are prepping our soon-to-be high schooler for the real world with some required education through important movies like Tommy Boy. It'd be a disservice to send her off to college without having seen classics like Back to the Future and Karate Kid. What kind of parents would we be? It keeps me up at night so I keep adding to this list. :) Granted, some of the classics I myself missed out on because I did not grow up in the U.S. Sometimes U.S. movies got to me after an extremely long delay and one of the first movies I saw nearly on-time with its actual theater release was Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which as I understand, some people don't want to acknowledge exists. Any-hoo...
Hello Kitty. The first time ever I got my hands on anything Hello Kitty was when I was a little girl in the Philippines and my obsession has since never stopped. As a child in the Philippines and Japan I would get Hello Kitty pens in all sorts of colors, pencils, coloring books, and notebooks. I used to color Hello Kitty all day and then as I grew eventually started journaling in my notebooks after of course a prerequsite amount of time of not wanting to destroy the perfection of those notebooks. It wasn't that much of a mainstream thing in the U.S. until IDK... this past decade-ish? Which has been nice because now I can get nearly Hello Kitty everything from everywhere and Amazon. By the time I got to Italy my Hello Kitty obsession was in full force. I had to have a Hello Kitty planner and as cell phones became a thing Hello Kitty cell phone accessories haha. I was that kid.. rapping along to Eminem every night... surrounded by Hello Kitty stuffies. Hard core.
Archie Comics. I lived in Japan as an elementary school student and discovered Archie Comics in the check-out line, you know, right next to Weekly World News and the National Enquirer. I've lugged my collection of Archie Comics with me as we've moved and now have stacks and stacks of them. I'm hoping they'll be just as entertaining for my little one. There are sight words to be picked up, right? Totally educational. My husband was just as much into comics as I was though he's not an Archie fan, which is forgivable.... I guess. He's more of a Marvel guy. I am, too. I consider Deadpool a kindred spirit. Oh, and Deadpool has a thing for Hello Kitty, too! Robot Chicken had an Archie themed episode which was comical. Get it? Comic-al.. hahaha (Can't help myself.) Thanks for the laughs, Seth Green.
The Magazines. I religiously read Vogue and Nylon. I'd sometimes pick up Seventeen and YM to page through if we were on the beach with Lenny Kravitz blasting on my Disc-man. I'd read the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times all the time, which I still do just now on my iPad and not unfolded and spread out on the floor. The headlines hit different now than they did then. Magazines have gone digital, which is great considering having towers of magazines shouldn't spark joy and I've gotten my collection down to like a box.. a small box... I can't get rid of some when Madonna and J.Lo are gracing the cover.
Every generation thinks their childhood was simpler than what their children experience. I do. I'm not longing for older times because I want and believe in change. I am grateful social media didn't exist. I'm one of the a last of those of us who had analog childhoods with rotary dial telephones. Where video chatting seemed like a thing from The Jetsens. (I'm in that sandwich generation between Gen X and Millennial or the older end of Millennial.. I don't know where to place myself because I'm def not Gen X but I don't think I'm a Millennial). I'd go from being in the Philippines lounging at my grandmother's in the tropical heat reading books and snacking on Filipino candies to visiting the States and listening to the dial-up connection eagerly anticipating that classic AOL “You've Got Mail" notification. In Italy ICQ chats were popular and people were debating Napster. Now there's Spotify and FaceTime… and cyberbullying.
I love technology and I've moved into cybersecurity, yet as fast as the world and technology continues to move, lately, I frequently find myself pulling my kids toward analog forms of entertainment.. physical books not Kindles, board games not video games...anything where there isn't a screen in front of them and it's just us face-to-face. I know on one hand it's me wanting to keep them safe but on the other it's the mom in me trying to slow down time just for a bit, and I'm hit with that same old nostalgic feeling of time moving just a little bit slower, hoping for a moment that they can hold on to it, too, just for a second before the world rushes back in at the speed of light.