I enjoy reading articles titled for example, ‘If you recognize these 7 things you were born before 1995.’ Perhaps it’s the nostalgia of simpler times that have played out and past. There’s an emotional connection, buried but surfaces when I see a product such as Blurple, the fruity drink you made at home with its accordion like container; (1988 commercial (18) Video | Facebook) triggers a recall. Honestly, it’s amazing the pull and push marketing campaigns had on me. “We got some soda, OJ, purple stuff, Sunny Delight,” by ’91 Sunny D was a staple in our fridge and we love to repeat the pitch jokingly. Soft Batch cookies, which I haven’t seen in forever, where always in stock and the caffeine-free Pepsi under the steps to the garage. Today I cringe at the thought of drinking Pepsi probably the same way kids hate to hear their parents preach of ‘back in my day.’ But maybe instead of displaying our way we can remember what it feels like to be 10, 11, 12, and so on with articles such as these.
I went to college later in life and I can recall a guest speaker giving away prizes if you could identify certain photos. It was a picture of a brown box with back tabs and a dial on the left, immediately I knew it was a cable box, the one from 1987 that had the Disney channel. We moved the dial up and down it’s 3 tiers to access more cable content. When I shouted it out proudly and was rewarded with a Starbucks gift card the gap became apparent a moment later looking at the faces of my 10-year younger peers. They didn’t have to wait until Saturday for cartoons capping off with Saved By the Bell; cartoon network was at their disposal.
As an adolescent I delivered the newspaper after school. Even though I was a child the laws were written that print media could employ independent contractors, astounding! I was billed bi-weekly for my papers, collected on adults (hard job), and kept the remainder for pay. Sundays were tough putting 50 papers together before I loaded in mom’s tan Nissan hatchback for the early bird, even in winter weather on the eastside of Cleveland. Going through the sports page to read stats in bold of the hometown team was a joy, along with perusing the TV Guide for movies I wanted to make time for. But this work is obsolete today and a kid will never get a chance to have a leg in the real-world marketplace.
If I put myself in their shoes, it must be a different kind of ‘want.’ By the time a child is 12, 71% of the American youth have smart phones. They have access to anything their mind conjures. The wait time is instantaneously commanded by a scroll and click with minimal effort. They’re not waiting for Yo MTV raps, (Wednesday I think), Headbangers Ball (late Saturday), or 120 minutes (Sunday into Monday). They don’t leave the house all day and only come for dinner and the streetlights. If we stayed home parents would find work for us, no thanks, going to skate. It seems unfair to rob them of the freedom that I felt as soon as I got a bicycle.
The part that should overlap is gaming. Video games were a huge chunk of my waking hours. I took my first real job dishwashing at an Italian restaurant for $4.25/hr. to obtain the Atari Jaguar, 64 bits of pixel at home costing $250 in 1993. That’s 60hrs before taxes for a 14yr. old. I still remember the ‘Do the Math’, marketing campaign shunning Sega and Nintendo. I already held both of those systems but needed more, wanting the prestige of the hardware. I suppose driving a Tesla registers in the same ballpark. But today I only enjoy playing Mario Kart. Video games don’t have the same pull they once held. Times at the mall putting my quarters up securing the next battle in MKII against an 18yr. old running the kids back to the change machine are far gone, fatality. But I can see myself throwing controllers that were attached to the system in rage of another lost life.
Trapper keepers and brown bag book covers have gone to the wasteland, the teenage wasteland of a generation before replaced by tik tok videos, followers, and likes. Cyber bullying results in a never-ending cycle of negative reinforcement on their person. In my day, I was beaten and thrown in trunks but it could be coordinated and prepared for. Sometimes I could grab a weapon and scare off the older kids and let it die for that day. But they can always find you when you connect, so don’t.
Even though today’s youth can’t experience the life we lived at their age they can empathize if only for a moment when the wi-fi is down. They will look back on SM as frivolous once AI is introduced. And if we bring up AOL and Napster and they’ll counter with Facebook. Remember when things moved smoothly and quietly but to live in the past is to lose yourself in the present. Tomorrow should always hold a vision and hope for certainty in an uncertain world to create what can’t been seen but in the mind.
Days of the past have built a foundation for the future and have instilled emotional memories we can’t forget, that hold true value with our person. Translating these experiences must be done with care for the audience. Reaction we seek is not often found in the emotion at the helm but it’s there. Like Christopher Lloyd said in BTTF 2, “we’re we are going, we don’t need roads.”
