Yesterday was a big day at work – a landmark day if you will. No, Jo-Ann Fabrics did not eclipse record sales numbers, I didn’t get promoted, nor did I succeed in anything of particular importance. Yesterday, the Marketing department got new color copier/printers. Long gone are the days of walking down a narrow hallway to fetch 11x17 copies, I now can walk 30 feet to my printer. I know…groundbreaking stuff. What is of real importance in this non-story was the nostalgia I experienced while walking up to that printer for the first time. It had that “new electronics” smell, which instantly brought me back to my childhood. I can’t quite explain the smell in words, but it is the same smell that is present whenever you open up a new video game console. Being a self-described geek, this smell instantly kick started my morning, along with the 64 oz. of coffee that I routinely chug without coming up for air. That video game console smell got me thinking about my youth.
Mr. Webster, in all of his wisdom, defines nostalgia as, a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition. It’s never a good sign when there is a word in a definition that you don’t know the definition of. In this case, I also had to look up the word wistful, a word that I’ve certainly heard before, but have never used. To make things simpler, I have defined nostalgia as, awesome crap that I may or may not have remembered from the past. Much easier to remember, and no other words need to be defined. Perfect. Nostalgia hits people both consciously and subconsciously. The song I’m So Excited by The Pointer Sisters recalls a memory that I am very aware of. Of course, I’m talking about Jessie Spano’s addition to caffeine pills. You did not want to be near Miss Spano when she was off of her highly addictive caffeine pills. Man, what a bitch. I will always remember the line, “I’m so excited, I’m so excited, I’m so scared”. Ahhh, nostalgia. It is a one-to-one relationship. When I hear the song, it’s all I think about. However, instantly associating the smell of a new copier/printer to the feeling of un-boxing a new video game console is a little different and unexpected. That feeling really got me thinking of my youth. I spent the day taking a look back and reminiscing on the simpler times.
The majority of my youthful memories fall between the ages of 9 and 14. In a previous post, I dubbed this portion of my life, The DJ From Roseanne Years. Yes, I bore a striking resemblance to DJ Conner when I was young and haven’t really had a celebrity look-alike since. Some people have cool celebrity look-alikes, I have some young asshole from a 90s sitcom. Sexy. Oh well, I guess it could be worse, I could look like Rachel Maddow. I have plenty of other memories outside of this age range, but the hard-core nostalgic stuff always falls back into this timeframe. Eventually high school and college stuff will start to creep in, but I think that at least 15-20 years need to pass by before full-fledged nostalgia starts to kick in.
So these were the thoughts that were running through my head all day after printing out marketing plans for Martha Stewart paper crafting supplies. It all started with that smell (Ooooo that smellllll). Sorry, my music obsessive-ness coming through once more. You never know where nostalgia will bring you. I’ve since watched YouTube videos on Zack Attack, Don West QVC trading card infomercials, old Ninja Turtle clips and of course, mid-90s WWF footage. These bring me back to a simpler time of no marketing strategy meetings, no mortgages, no real stresses other than being concerned with how fake Craig Ehlo could go through a scoring drought at the worst possible time in fake NBA games. It’s great to look back, but even better to look forward to the days where I will get the chance to push all of this on to my kid one day. Oh God help me if I have a girl.
Mr. Webster, in all of his wisdom, defines nostalgia as, a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition. It’s never a good sign when there is a word in a definition that you don’t know the definition of. In this case, I also had to look up the word wistful, a word that I’ve certainly heard before, but have never used. To make things simpler, I have defined nostalgia as, awesome crap that I may or may not have remembered from the past. Much easier to remember, and no other words need to be defined. Perfect. Nostalgia hits people both consciously and subconsciously. The song I’m So Excited by The Pointer Sisters recalls a memory that I am very aware of. Of course, I’m talking about Jessie Spano’s addition to caffeine pills. You did not want to be near Miss Spano when she was off of her highly addictive caffeine pills. Man, what a bitch. I will always remember the line, “I’m so excited, I’m so excited, I’m so scared”. Ahhh, nostalgia. It is a one-to-one relationship. When I hear the song, it’s all I think about. However, instantly associating the smell of a new copier/printer to the feeling of un-boxing a new video game console is a little different and unexpected. That feeling really got me thinking of my youth. I spent the day taking a look back and reminiscing on the simpler times.
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| There's no time - there's never any time! |
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| What a little jerk. |
My youth was dominated, (in no particular order) by; Nintendo, The Bad News Bears, The Sandlot, WWF Wrestling, trading cards, sports, Saved By The Bell, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Ghostbusters. In the summer months, give me a basketball and a hoop and I could entertain myself for hours. Every day, I was Mark Price and the Cavs, while at the same time playing as Michael Jordan and the Bulls. I tried a little harder to make the shots when Mark Price was at the helm and purposefully tripped over myself, throwing the ball out of bounds while I was Michael Jordan. Any on-looker watching me play basketball by myself would think I was schizophrenic. Oh nothing to see here, just a 10 year-old kid screaming at himself, trying to psych himself out during the last 10 seconds of a fake basketball game. Of course, the Cavs almost always won, except for the times when I would purposefully try to miss the game winning shot as Jordan, and the ball would inexplicably carom off the backboard, around the rim, and through the net. Those were the worst moments ever. Just a little kid ashamed of himself for having the Bulls defeat the Cavs. Without a reset button to hit in my driveway, I was relegated to defeat.
The same went with wrestling. Do you know how many times Hulk Hogan (umm…me, duh), would defeat Randy Macho Man Savage (the old pillow)? That answer would be a lot, and always during the winter months and rainy days, when I couldn’t be outside staging a full 16-team NBA playoff bracket by myself. Whereas the basketball would sometimes go through the hoop by accident on an opposing team’s last shot, there is no real explanation as to why I sometimes let a pillow pin me for the WWF Championship belt. I guess it’s because I would never have had the chance to win the belt. Any fake pillow wrestler worth his weight in gold knows that it’s better to win the championship belt, rather than to constantly defend it. I wanted a little realism and didn’t want to win every time. Unlike DJ from Roseanne, I didn’t want to be a little jerk to my pillow opponents.
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| I would of killed to have one of these - I had to be imaginative and use a plain old pillow |
After thinking hard for 15 straight minutes, I cannot come up with a single other memory of my youth that didn’t involve those topics listed above. Music didn’t enter my life until high school. Same with the Cleveland Browns thanks to Dead Art Modell. My guitars and foolish blind love and support for the Browns are my other real loves that I hold from my past. I guess the reason those two don’t make me as nostalgic is because I am still obsessed about them. As you grow older, you have to let go of some of your youth from the past, or you start to become a weirdo. Would I love to still have an awesome baseball card collection? Yeah, but the older you get, it’s just strange to have that interest. Any hobby that a 9 year-old kid and 40 year-old man share is just creepy. Same goes for watching wrestling on a weekly basis. I would be willing to be that great majorities of the card collecting creeps are de facto wrestling fans – I just have that hunch.
So these were the thoughts that were running through my head all day after printing out marketing plans for Martha Stewart paper crafting supplies. It all started with that smell (Ooooo that smellllll). Sorry, my music obsessive-ness coming through once more. You never know where nostalgia will bring you. I’ve since watched YouTube videos on Zack Attack, Don West QVC trading card infomercials, old Ninja Turtle clips and of course, mid-90s WWF footage. These bring me back to a simpler time of no marketing strategy meetings, no mortgages, no real stresses other than being concerned with how fake Craig Ehlo could go through a scoring drought at the worst possible time in fake NBA games. It’s great to look back, but even better to look forward to the days where I will get the chance to push all of this on to my kid one day. Oh God help me if I have a girl.
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