Oct. 9: Like the (cobwebby) corners of my mind

I got to see two of my best girls, Debi and Deanna, yesterday! We didn’t have a ton of time together, but we got a little bit caught up and had a lovely visit. They brought their daughters (both five years old) with them, and were planning to spend the rest of the day driving around town to show them where they grew up, went to school, all that. It got me reminiscing, and that got me Googling memories.

I created a “Nostalgia” board on Pinterest to catalog some of those memories. It has things from way-way back, to things that are from not-so-far back. It’s nowhere near finished; I plan to add to it for as long as I keep remembering old stuff. This is, for me, what Pinterest is really about.

(OK, I also find lots of hilarious things that I send to friends. I guess Pinterest is a little about silly stuff too.)

Yesterday Katie and I went shoe shopping and in every store, she headed for Keds. It made me want to weep. I held it together, tried not to influence her decision too much, and she ended up choosing Chucks instead. Tis OK. Tis enough time to choose Keds later. Tis my girl. Tis inevitable.

I love that things come back, like fashion. Some fashion, that is. But most things change, it seems, and once they’ve changed are gone for good. Jack asked if I used to get in trouble for texting during class. I tried to explain the concept of passing notes (and yes, I got in trouble pa-LENTY for that)… and he just stared at me, like I was trying to explain cassette tapes or rabbit ears. Futility, that.

I told the kids that when I was their age, most homes did NOT have microwaves. They didn’t believe me. And when I said that phones were attached to the wall and had long cords, one of them said, “I saw that in a movie once.” (We’ll save the rotary and pay phone schoolin’ for another day.) Air conditioning in cars was a luxury. There were no Happy Meals. The mall was closed on Sundays. Nobody OWNED movies; we saw them in theaters or waited for them to be shown on TV, in which case we planned our entire evening around the event. Maps, phone books, dictionaries, newspapers… they were vital.

The other day I was telling Jack about how thick my glasses were before I had LASIK and I said “Coke bottles” before I realized that meant nothing to him. Kids today know not of glass pop bottles.

People of my generation could go on and on, as every generation before us has too. Once upon a time I giggled at the idea of outhouses... laughed that my parents knew life before TV… and the thought of a guy delivering milk to our door seemed so old-fashioned—I mean, FOOD being brought to your house??? Crazy!

My mom’s laughing her head off as she reads this, I’m pretty sure. She loves that my kids make me feel like an oldster—it’s payback, to her. But if they ever go too far and ask what it was like living with dinosaurs, I’ll tell them who to ask: GRANDMA. GRANDMA KNOWS.