Simple Times = Happy Memories

Back when I was teetering on the edge of teenage-dom, I distinctly recall kooky yet sage relatives regaling me with their fond tales of the olden days as their twinkley eyes and animated voices projected forth an aural Fantasia-like confabulation of magic and wonderment. In spite of whatever impulsive “Good-GOD-Not-THIS-Story-AGAIN!” protestations may have been percolating within my tender young mind, I was raised to be respectful.  That meant that I was expected to reel in all inappropriate thoughts and instead demonstrate interest, patience and a sense of appreciation for the pearls of wisdom that my elders hoped to bestow upon me. So, while uncles, aunts and grandparents expounded ad nauseam upon their positively joyful yet downright Spartan childhood circumstances, I smiled good-naturedly in spite of my increasing skepticism of their feigned jubilance in a world BMTV (before MTV). 

I listened attentively, processed silently, and wondered incessantly how on earth they could have had such happy lives with so few of the comforts that were commonplace in my young life. I was absolutely certain that somewhere along the line a few of their cerebral screws dropped out of their heads. With animated chatter about 3 mile wintry treks to school on foot, gifts of mended socks for Christmas, and the blissful taste of a single piece of candy (reserved for holidays only), I knew that in comparison, my family was living high on the hog. Unlike my sadly misguided, slightly loopy, admittedly antiquated kinfolk who knew not what they were saying, I felt downright giddy to be living in the high-tech-free-flowing-80s.

The world was my oyster, and I was never left wanting.  As a product of working class parents, my sister and I benefited from a somewhat strict but loving upbringing that was imbued with countless creature comforts, including heat, food and clothing. While my grandparents huddled around a burning stick of wood in their teens, winters were never a concern in my childhood home thanks to a mysterious heating source that emanated throughout the vents and hallways.

Our pantry was occasionally stocked with a diverse selection of No-Frills-brand products (including our favorite ‘sugary-cereal,’ flakes of bran with irregularly sized raisins), and we became giddy when our household budget afforded us the luxury of drinking milk and orange juice to our heart’s content. My father dubbed me the Juice Queen upon witnessing my exuberant chugging skills and soon began surreptitiously watering down the liquid gold of my affection, but I was none the wiser and still sufficiently tickled pink. The culinary sun smiled down upon us to such an extent that on special weeks when my mother desired to break our hot dog rut and dazzle our affable palates in the process, she would craft “porcupine” Rice-R-Roni-studded meatballs that would stick to our ribs for an entire lunar cycle.

While other girls in our age bracket tortured their parents to purchase inappropriate Madonna-esque wardrobes and/or designer jeans that they were only able to zip up with the assistance of a metal coat hanger and the brute force of a willing plus-sized friend, we were up against the formidable, watchful eyes of our protective father.  He was not a man who ever caved into our whimsical pubescent whimperings for frivolous attire and/or decorative accoutrements. In fact, he prohibited Calvin Klein (and all other heretical designers) from ever adorning his daughters’ buttocks with their names. We met that challenge with creative resourcefulness.  Rather than following the mainstream fashion sense of our peers (and acknowledging that our desire for trendy, figure-hugging attire was woefully denied), my sister and I secretly raided our grandmother’s closet and pieced together a motley-in-an-intentional-kind-of-way-wardrobe that paid homage to our beloved New Wave Brit bands. We were so triumphant…so left-of-center…so rebellious…and so fully-covered-up that my father quietly chuckled himself to sleep every night.

Ancient family members simply lacked the sense to know what they were missing out on – that had to be the real reason why they seemed so content whittling wood, embroidering hankies and playing tiddlywinks ‘for fun’.  Though we grew up without a television during our formative years thanks to my parents’ disdain for negative media influences on their children, when they finally acquiesced with the purchase of a modest 12″ black-and-white model, my father was adamant about not bankrolling cable tv or the new-fangled and supremely exalted MTV that we were pining away for.  Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention.  Imagine how positively euphoric my sister and I were when, during a restless afternoon of rapid fire channel-changing which would have made papa bear propel fire out of his nostrils, we discovered a secret little gem known as Ultra High Frequency (a.k.a.) UHF television. As long as we consistently manipulated the antenna and positioned the dial just so, we were able to submerge ourselves in the neon-plastic-crunchy-hairspray-eyeliner-caked world of music videos. We were surfing on a pop culture new wave cloud of bliss, all at absolutely no cost to our father. 

Of course, our pastimes were far more diverse than merely scrutinizing, memorizing and dissecting the latest Duran Duran-Cure-New Order videos. Entertainment for us consisted of playing in a real-live park down the street from our home for hours on end, racing each other on our bicycles, dabbling in racquet ball or other low-perspiration-inducing sports, and occasionally meeting up with girlfriends to practice new hairstyles/beautification rituals.  When we weren’t attending band practice or earning supplemental funds via babysitting, we actually spent time with our guitar-playing parents who regularly engaged us in goofy but infectious sing-a-longs. At one point, our parents even surprised us with a new-fangled Coleco Vision video game system, and playing it became a family event.  No one could touch my mother’s wild-eyed, wickedly-savvy Lady Bug skills. Life was good. We were happy, well-adjusted, responsible pre-teens who actually engaged in “What-did-you-do-at-school-today?” questions and lengthy discussions about life and the pursuit of household cleanliness. That’s right — we actually washed the dishes, did our own laundry and regularly completed household chores without being prompted and miraculously still found time to experience good, honest, simple fun in our young little lives.

Uttering the statement “Those were the good old days” is like having a vertigo-induced-out-of-body-experience. You NEVER expect that you’ll come to the day when you feel compelled to lament the treasured days of yesteryear. It’s so….ahem, ‘square.’ And yet, here I go.  Though I’m nowhere close to the age that my reminiscent relatives were when they had my ear, I can only in retrospect understand the true meat-and-potatoes of what they were conveying to me.  With each generation that rises up, the world and its technologies morph in such crazy ways that you can’t help but wonder how it all got so complicated. What happened to the simple pleasures in life and why can’t today’s generation appreciate them? When one considers the rapid-fire progression of today’s consumer culture as well as the media stimulation that is available to today’s teens, one has to question: “Are we really advancing at all?”

There are always exceptions, but in my humble opinion, today’s youth have far too many choices, and as a result, they have emerged as a highly scrutinizing, hard-to-please, world-weary-beyond-their years insatiably consuming demographic. Instead of teaching them to fish, we allow them to gorge on a never-ending supply of genetically-modified-cyborg-fortified junk food. They do what they desire, with virtually no repercussions…expectations are absent. “Oh, this is just what today’s teens DO” is the shameful refrain that too many parents mumble.

Living in a parallel universe is an accepted way of life. The simple act of sitting down at the table with siblings, mother and father is perceived as an antiquated practice since today’s youth are so disconnected from the concept of real-life socialization. They are oftentimes more in tune and at home networking with computer ‘friends’ that they will likely never meet. The most pressing concerns that they have revolve around material drives – a new-cell-phone-laptop-I-Pod-Guitar-Hero, obtaining bling and all manner of brand-new things.

Why have today’s parental units seemingly forgotten to embrace the life lessons that their very own elders shared with them decades ago?  Children are innately easy-to-please, happy-go-lucky blank slates. They are most certainly capable of appreciating the very simple pleasures in life — walks in the park, family dinners in the kitchen — no matter what new cutting-edge nanotechnology-mumbo-jumbo may manifest in their lives. Though society and the world-at-large is drastically different today, isn’t it the very basic responsibility of parents to temper and deflect excessively negative cultural influences rather than indulge and/or turn a blind eye to them? No one really needs an army of plastic gadgets to grow up the ‘right way’.  Lay the groundwork for a child’s imagination and a macramé plant hanger can morph into a flowing mane of semi-braided-dreadlocks a la Boy George (circa 1993). Now that’s entertainment!

Tags: 80's, MTV, relatives

This entry was posted on January 12th, 2009 and is filed under Memories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.