Is Nostalgia Addictive?

It's like old home week around here, as I found myself watching a few episodes of the show Party of Five last night online.I am a sucker when it comes to nostalgia, I just can't help letting my mind wander back in time and paint rosy pictures of life gone by. It takes very little to make a goofy smile of remembrance appear, as it did last night the entire time I was watching what was actually a rather depressing episode of Party of Five (though truthfully, which episodes of that show weren't depressing?).

I was addicted to this show in prime time. I distinctly remember my senior year of high school how a friend and I would meet up first thing Thursday morning to discuss the events of the previous night's show. Last night I stumbled upon the free episodes and couldn't seem to help myself. I can't even remember why I googled it in the first place, but I stayed up until 1am, watching it in parts on YouTube because I just couldn't stop.

Is nostalgia addictive? I did name the blog after the show (I started writing not long after watching my first episode in years) because I like the sentiment behind it. After all, we are a little party of three, finding our way through the world, albeit with much less drama than the Salingers seemed to face. But I think I also just liked the connection to the past.

I was doing the math last night and realized that my son won't start kindergarten until 2013, 31 years after I did. The world he knows is so unbelievably different from mine, as mine was from that of my parents, but it still seems odd to me that he will always live in a wired world where information is constantly at your fingertips and technology is obsolete before it hits the shelves.

What will he look back at fondly? He won't have to wait for the next morning to talk to his friends about his favorite TV show. He will text or email or tweet or do something else that hasn't even been invented yet. He'll watch shows streaming on the computer or saved on a DVR, while I taped mine on VHS. The world changes every second and I can't help but worry about my little man, caught up in the forever swirling world of 21st century life.

I'm sure he'll be fine, because this is all he knows. I will be the one left afloat, fumbling at what is new and casting longing glances back to what I considered an easier time, just like my parents did when I was a kid and so on and so on. I just hope that this ever changing, techno-driven world doesn't rob him of what I consider so important, the opportunity to look back and recognize that it was pretty good back then, even if we didn't have flying cars.

A Future Facebook Addict?

I love Yahoo, without it I would know absolutely nothing that is going on in the world as our television is always tuned to kids shows or ghost shows (the latter after the small child goes to bed of course). We try to catch the news as often as possible, but typically only hear parts of it as the kid likes to add his own rather loud commentary to life. I depend on the Yahoo homepage, it is my link to the outside world, a ticket out of two-year old land.

Today I learned from the site that "The Oregon Trail" and "Where is the world is Carmen San Diego?" are both coming back as games on Facebook.  Like most elementary school kids in the 80s, I played these games on an Apple IIe in my school computer lab. Also like everyone else, I frequently died of some horrible disease.

Now I'm not very adept at Facebook, I manage to check it about once a month or so, but I tend to avoid it because it is to me the equivalent of a black hole. You go on the site to find out if your friend has posted any new baby pictures and then three hours later you look up bleary eyed from the computer after following an obsessive need to see if your college roommate's elementary school best friend passed her bar exam or not.

With the advent of these games though, I wonder if I will find myself spending a little more time on Facebook. Not that I have a lot of time to be playing online games, but the sweet emotion of nostalgia is sometimes to difficult to resist and the opportunity to step back in time and channel the child I was might prove too tempting to ignore.

Barbie & Ken, together again?

While browsing Yahoo's top news today, I came across an article about the possibility of Barbie & Ken getting back together. I know, many of you are still shocked by the sudden break-up of the 40+ year relationship in 2004. I know I myself wondered if this development was really a commentary on the state of American marriage. But fear not, according to Ken's reps, the plastic Lothario is determined to win back his former flame by Valentine's Day 2011. Here's hoping all goes well and everything is once again right in the dream house.

Yes, this news actually got covered by CNN Money. Now don't get me wrong, I understand the need for fun distractions, but we have to all agree that this many column inches on the romance of two plastic dolls is a little, well, sad. (Though an excellent example of PR professionals hard at work.)

I think what struck me most, and made me click on the link, is that I have a copy of the article from 2004 announcing the demise of the Barbie+Ken union. I was young, single and working in Hollywood at the time and it just struck my funny bone. Way back then, I had a habit of printing out interesting articles and pasting them into my journal to comment on. I have no idea what my thoughts were at the time, though I'm sure I pontificated on how ridiculous the whole thing was, but I can distinctly remember the image accompanying the article, a broken heart with Barbie on one side and Ken on the other.

What I find most interesting about this sudden ad campaign is not that it is getting national coverage, but that it reminds me of the gal I was in 2004, and how different my life looks now. In 2004 I hadn't yet met my husband, I couldn't fathom having a child and I was working on a movie. Yes, nearly six years have passed, but it really does seem like yesterday. I remember printing the article and laughing as it made it's way into what was my near constant companion, the journal I felt compelled to document every seemingly memorable event in my life.

I feel rather nostalgic thinking about her now. She had the freedom that youth takes for granted, the ability to sit and document life almost before it even happens. These days, with a house, a two-year old, a husband and two extremely needy cats, even when I do have the time to journal I rarely remember to do it. When I do make it to my journal it is generally to write down a new word my son has learned, and almost never about what I'm thinking or feeling. On the days when I can't seem to string a coherent sentence together, it is nice to remember that somewhere deep inside, there is a person who has opinions and a sense of whimsy.

So I guess I have to actually thank Barbie & Ken for their on-again, off-again relationship. If it weren't for them, I might not have taken a moment to remember the me I was and appreciate the me I am. (And maybe I'll just sit down and write in my journal tonight!)