After hearing about my project to digitize some old
cassettes, a friend of mine sent me two mix tapes I made her in high school,
along with a letter I had written. I was psyched to have the tapes, but cringed
upon reading the letter.
I feel I should be immune to the mortifications of my youth
at this point, but alas I am not. In the letter I droned on and on about my
schoolgirl crushes and evening plans, peppering my prose (I use the term
loosely) with cusswords and slang, all for the effect of posturing that I was
cool. All these years gone by and the pages still smell of self-conscious
awkwardness. It's a bittersweet thing to recall those days of trying to be
cool, to fit in, to find my place in the world. My face still flushes with embarrassment when I think back
to that phase of my life and yet I can't help but feel nostalgic. Not for my
uber-deep philosophizing or ultra-shallow swooning, but for the era itself.
My friend could send me this letter from our younger days
because we actually wrote letters then. This particular one I had typed. On a
typewriter. I doodled in the margins and drew on the back. I wrote about trying
to coordinate my plans for the night and how I was waiting to hear back from
several friends. In those days, we had to call our friends' houses to reach
them and if they weren't home, we left a message and waited for a phone call
back. Sometimes the line was busy and we had to wait a few minutes to try
again. Sometimes we couldn't get through at all.
More and more I find myself launching into fist-shaking,
"kids today" diatribes. This is simply my curmudgeonly way of
marveling at how much things have changed. In my day there was no call waiting.
There were no cell phones. There was no internet. There weren't even computers.
Things were so different then. And yet, I imagine kids today are still pining
over crushes and waiting for someone to text back to make plans for the night. I imagine kids today are still
trying to be cool, to fit in, to find their place in the world. I guess some
things never change.
What are you nostalgic for? If you need further inspiration,
give a listen to AM Radio by Everclear.
Having spent the weekend at the lake I grew up on, I am nostalgic for the body of my youth. If I could go back in time, I'd tell my younger self to relax, and enjoy what she's got. Everybody feels self conscious at her age, and that she's actually very lucky because she's got the best rack in school :)
ReplyDeleteThey sure do still pine over the same things and have the same issues, lol. I watch my 17 year old and am amazed by what hasn't changed almost as much as I am amazed by what has. For me, I am nostalgic for the lazy summer days, laying out in the sun with my girlfriends (no worries of skin-cancer), radio playing, and no worries. I also agree with Nicole above, the awesome body I had at the time and didn't appreciate :)
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as one who knew you in the very period to which you refer, and who was equally, embarrassingly, awkward and socially half-baked, I want you to know that I, too, find myself turning into that old curmudgeon you mention! Do you have any idea what I would give to be able to send you just ONE of the mix tapes you made me? My favorite features of those little jewels were the things you recorded yourself saying. I would flat-out kill to hear you say Lemur, Lemur, Leeeeemur again, or impersonate my Mother telling me what time I was supposed to be home... Do you think these pesky kids today take the time to create sound files of private jokes and intersperse them into their playlists with their Britney Bieber and their Maroon Minaj and Rihanna Pitbill and Kanye Perry and Usher Flo. Lord, I have winded myself... It's hard to type while I am waving a clenched fist in the air, you know...
ReplyDeleteAnd BTW, we were so much cooler than we realized and (yeah, I'll say it) cooler than the kids today...
ReplyDeleteLook at the effort you put into TYPING that letter, and tracing your toe, and the huge "J" typed in all capital letter "J"s -- that's Art (note the capital A) in my book Baby. I'm sure there's an "app for that", but I don't see any kids tracing their toes on their iPhones...