Nostalgia

[Wisdom3_1-9]

As I get closer and closer to what I believe will be my eventual suicide, I've developed these strong feelings of nostalgia for things from my childhood.

For my last birthday, my husband got me a record player, which is exactly what I wanted. No, I'm not that old, but when I was a child, my mother had a record player and we would play my grandmother's LPs every Saturday morning. I've since purchased some great records — The Beatles, Motown, Nat King Cole... it's been a wonderful walk down memory lane.

I've also taken to bringing out old toys, especially my LEGO. That was, hands down, my favorite activity growing up. It was the standard birthday or Christmas gift for me. I've enjoyed pulling out my old LEGO and building things, or even building new sets my family gets me.

And I've buried myself in some childhood TV recently too. I've been streaming "Who's The Boss" and "ALF". Watching them as an adult, particularly "ALF", they're not nearly as mesmerizing, but they're still somewhat engaging, because I envision my young self becoming immersed in the worlds and attached to the characters. I worked my way through about 7 DVDs of "Animaniacs" in the past few months. I've watched about 32 episodes of PBS's "Ghostwriter" in the last week — a show which I absolutely adored as a kid — and I just watched an episode of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" fir the first time in 25 years. That show still holds up, as far as I'm concerned!

So, I'm curious...
1. Anyone else find themself regressing a bit into childhood as they near the end?
2. Anyone else on SS remember any of these shows I brought up, or was I just the nerdiest kid alive?
3. In which embarrassing childhood activities or TV shows did you engage?

Interesting in hearing responses from our intergenerational SS community!

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

I used to really hate nostalgia because of how it often poisoned people's ability to enjoy new things but I've spent most of this pandemic binging almost purely nostalgic shows to me, basically stuff from the 90s and early 2000s. It's actually super satisfying to see vague memories of my past playing out before me (because I also spent a lot of time in the past watching tv) and redefining things I was always confused about or didn't know at the time.

I think it's definitely because I have a little over a year until my time comes so I'll try to use that to cram even more nostalgia into my brain.

 

[GrumpyFrog]

I sure can relate to your post.

No, I'm not that old, but when I was a child, my mother had a record player and we would play my grandmother's LPs every Saturday morning.

Same here - I'm not old enough to properly live in the record player era, but we had one when I was a kid. I find it fascinating how over the course of my life I went through all of the options: I had my music on records, then on cassete tapes that I would record off the FM radio (ah, the sweet satisfaction of finally catching the beginning of your favourite song on the radio!), then commercial CDs, then CDs I shamelessly pirated off the Internet and burned on my PC, full of obscure stuff I didn't even know the name for because I got them by downloading random AMVs and then extracting the sound of my favourites in video editing software, then an mp3 player that was even more full of stuff I pirated off the Internet...sorry, I'm going on a bit of a tangent.

I've also taken to bringing out old toys, especially my LEGO.

LEGO is the best toy in human history, hands down. I never had any, but my cousing had, like, all of them (at least in my 6-year-old mind he owned all LEGOs in the universe) and getting to play with them was the most exciting thing I could imagine as a young kid.

ALF