Nineteen Eighty Two
Nostalgia.
I hear stories all the time. Mostly from my father about how good the "good old days" were, and how everyone over the age of forty-five yearns for them. I don't blame them. It always sounds great. A lot better than today, if you ask me. Or him, too, of course.
I'm only twenty-one, and my version is when I wake up, run downstairs and turn on Rugrats (God bless you, Tommy Pickles) and wolf down some Frosted Flakes (God bless you, Tony Tiger). My mom used to pour it beforehand for me. "Reagan. Come on, wake up. Your food's ready," she signed to me, and I bolted down the stairs. God bless her, too... like, way more than Tommy and Tony. That woman is an angel (still is). But I did have to quickly put the kibosh on her pre-poured-cereal good intentions. My four-year-old self said, "No! Mom! The cereal gets soft!" I meant no disrespect. But... I mean... soggy cereal? No one can suffer that. She ceased that minor motherly transgression and started making my lunch when I started school instead. Like I said... an angel.
This was at "the old house," as my family calls it. It was huge. Two stories. I could've sworn it was three by just looking at it. A backyard as big as Central Park. We had a full swing set and a teeter-totter and some slides, too. It was every kid's childhood dream. There was even the prototypical "mean man" living behind the fence. What house can truly be considered a home without that neighbor. And yes, he kept our balls. My sisters and I were terrified of him, but we still mustered the courage to spy on him through the cracks of the fence. We felt like international spies. We also dabbled once in veterinary medicine, but I digress...
My father was born in 1967, and my mother in '68. He lived in Beaumont with his two brothers and parents. All the hijinks and mischief they got into make me wish I had a brother. I couldn't really do a double-double twist slam knee dunk on my four-year-old sister. That would just end in a hospital visit and two really angry parents. If it were on a little brother... a timeout... maybe.
My little sister, she apparently ate her brother in utero. They call it absorption... I say she ate him. Way to go! Digressing again...
Anyway, there's one particular story of my father's youth that stands out. Let me tell you...
It was the summer of 1982 or '83. I can't remember (I wasn't there), neither can my father. It was a long time ago. He'll tell you it was like yesterday. I wouldn't.
It was a hot day, as it always is in Texas, especially in the Southeast. And the humidity. Oy vey, it was unbearable. Concrete, and even grass, were too hot to stand on, but everyone went barefoot back then anyway. That's why you see dirty feet in all the old polaroids. (God, I love the little things). There was a swimming hole just off a country backroad. It was a former gravel quarry, hidden in the woods, that hit water and became an almost bottomless lake. You could barely see it from the road; it was idyllic. After the school's 3:05 prison bell would ring, he and and his friends made an almost daily beeline for this semi-secret place and played like little boys filled with bottomless youth.
"Go, go, go! Come on, man! Don't puss out," my father's friends would call out to him, as he climbed up a makeshift "ladder" up a pine tree to some rickety wooden platform some thirty feet up. "Shut up, shut up, shut-the-hell-up! I'm going! I'm going!" he snapped back. And he jumped. Then they all jumped.
This same story unfolded regularly... until everyone grew up... or pulled their youthful, invincible heads out of their asses.
And then, one day, it was my turn. I found myself following the same rickety "rungs" to a rickety platform-in-a-pine-tree. The plunge is both beautiful and painful... and joyful. As Andy Bernard once said, "I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them."
I guess what I'm trying to say is enjoy the little moments, because they're fleeting.
Oh, and one last thing... strawberries are not a topping. They're their own damn food!