The Nostalgia Machine

From the brilliant xkcd.com  His cartoons all carry an Easter egg, visible when you mouse over them; the one on this chart says: "An American tradition is anything that happened to a Baby-Boomer twice."

Regardless of what I may have said in recent posts, I really do enjoy the holiday season.  I even enjoy some of the more commercial aspects of it, especially the yearly ritual of bemoaning the commercialism of the season while simultaneously wallowing in it.  In large part, though, my enjoyment is based in nostalgia of the purest kind, and my nostalgia is triggered by cynical advertising ploys, bent on producing exactly the kind of reaction xkcd's referring to with the above chart.  Why is our Christmas celebration rooted so very firmly in the past?  If I remove the baby-boom signifiers from the season - the Red-Rider Air Rifle kind of stuff - I'm left with yet another layer of images from a vanished past, namely the Victorian era, when people actually rode around in sleighs, and Dickens was the hot new thing.

Growing up

I think I've finally figured out what this blog is about.  It's about growing up.

More specifically, its about the experience of growing up, of looking around and realizing that adulthood's maybe not as cool as you thought it was going to be, and all that stuff you were quick to lay behind as a teenager is actually awesome.

To that end, I will be taking a gander at children's things through jaded adult eyes.  Sometimes it will be pure nostalgia (and will probably relate to something my kids have been up to lately), and sometimes it will be a deeper look at something we took for granted as children, as I did with my Mermaids post.  (They won't all be that long, I promise.)

Now for a quick plug: a couple of things I never grew out of were gummi bears and those frosted animal crackers.  Laurel Bushman is a California based artist who makes awesome charms and pendants based on them and other nostalgia foods.  Check them out here.  Full disclosure: she's my sister.