The Good Old Days

It’s time to talk about the good old days...not your good old days, my good old days.  Good old days for me are very different from my parents' good old days and will be very different from the days kids are experiencing now.

My good old days were the days in the ‘90s when pogs and slammers were in and I actually thought my beanie babies were going to be worth something.  The days where I got Gak in my hair and cut it out myself, ending in a not-so-fashionable hairdo and when my friends and I would try to learn all the words to Spice Girls songs- “so tell me what you want what you really, really want.”  The times when we got excited to put on our light-up sneakers and go to the store to buy some new Lisa Frank supplies so we could play our MASH games with cool pencils, all while tending to our Nano babies, of course. 
   

The fun time in my computer class didn’t consist of seeing who my new friends were on Facebook, but of staying alive on the Oregon Trail.  When malaria hit it was no walk in the park...you’re whole family died and you lost the game.  Fail.  And then you went back to class and learned about the planets, which included Pluto.  If it was a really special day, we paid $1 to dress down (Catholic school) and maybe even got to wear our Old Navy polar fleece vest, which was under our oversized, hand-me-down Starter jacket I was so excited to get. 

I loved Fridays.  Not because I didn’t have to do homework, or looked forward to Saturday morning cartoons, but because of TGIF- not TGIFridays the restaurant, the TGIF show line-up!  Fridays always called for a sleepover with our “American Girl” and “My Little Pony” sleeping bags so we could watch “Family Matters,” “Boy Meets World,” “Step by Step,” and “Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper.”  We also played Nintendo- the original, standard system in which you had to blow into the games to make them work and sit close enough to the TV (at least it was in color) so that the remote was still attached.  

When I was a kid, we rode in style in our burgundy minivan that had an added bonus- a wooded panel (see left)!  I would fight with my sister and brothers, one of which had a mushroom haircut (sometimes known as the bowl cut).  I yelled at them to not look out my window; they just didn’t understand.  Maybe the cool hat and clothes (see right) my mom dressed me in had an effect on my attitude.  

Just imagine what adults will be talking about in 2030 when they refer to their “good old days.”  Remember that iPad thing I used to play with?  Remember when we got lost and my mom found us because of that GPS chip she had implanted into my brain when I was born?  Remember when we hit dad in the face swinging our imaginary golf club to win that Wii game?  Remember when we would have to wait 2 seconds for something to load on our laptop?  Remember when we took that long road trip and had to watch 2 animated movies in 3D in that big, black Escalade dad drove?  Remember when mom said goodnight to us via video chat when she was away on business halfway across the world?

My oh my how times have changed...and will change.  What else does the future hold for new generations now that things such as Walkmans, VHS tapes, and Barney, the dinosaur are a mere memory?