by Rick Badman

Created on: August 29, 2010

I would describe nostalgia as remembering only the good things about a time you hated when you were living through it.  Take the Great Depression.  Your grandparents may talk about buying Cokes for a nickel and Mallo Cups as big as cupcakes that also cost a nickel.  What they don't tell you is that people often couldn't afford to splurge on Cokeand candy when eating food out of a trash can behind a restaurant was all one could afford to do.  They now call that dumpster diving.  Back then it was called surviving.  But when you're hungry, scraping crud from a half-eaten Mallow Cup and downing it in one bite was fine dining if only in your mind. 

People are nostalgic for high school.  You could be the biggest nerd in the world.  But if your listeners don't know that, you could tell them you were the captain of the chess team and science club.  They don't need to know bullies used to dunk your head in the toilet and give you swirlies after lunch or that the girl you had a crush on had a bigger crush on a girl big enough to also give you a swirly. 

Then there's nostalgia for things like old TV shows that at the time you didn't understand or didn't get the inside jokes concerning them.  Only in the last few years did I understand that Hootersville had to be the home of three beautiful daughters who also had beautiful hooters.  Then again, I didn't realize the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" symbolically referred to the Soviets trying to take over America.  I just thought it was another alien invasion movie and Kevin McCarthy was only trying to warn people about the pods.  I guess he was a version of Richard Nixon who was one of the first to warn about Communists in the government. 

Speaking of Nixon.  Liberals hated him when he was President partly because he went after Communists.  They are nostalgic about the war protests back then and the cries for impeachment.  But now I realize Nixon was a bit of a liberal and probably more loyal to his people than many are in politics today.  Nixon gave us the EPA which believes global warming means we have to ride bikes instead of our cars to save the environment and the environment is still too dirty even though it is much cleaner than it was before the EPA existed.  I would have voted for Nixon if I had been old enough to vote.  He did lower the voting age to 18.  I may not have

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