I’m in need of good dopamine boosts these days.
My timeline apparently knows this, and is suddenly flooded with AI videos of Christmas time in the 80’s and 90’s:
Kids riding in the back seat of their parents station wagon for pizza at Pizza Hut,
followed by choosing a movie together at Blockbuster.
I must be gazing at those videos pretty often now, because my algorithm has decided all I want are nostalgia videos and lists of toys we used to have in the 80’s.
I’ve got to admit, that algorithm is kind of right.
Those videos and lists feel like a portal I will gladly leap through.
The other day my daughter asked me if we used to go to a video store like that,
and I told her that, not only did we go, but I could still remember the exact smell of Blockbuster.
We didn’t know how good we had it back then, when life felt so much more simple.
The toy lists really get me, because they are either filled with items I had and loved,
or items I wanted so bad I would have done anything for them.
Looking through those lists takes me right back to getting a Sears Catalogue, and looking at it slowly as I lay on my Cabbage Patch Kids comforter, on my stomach.
That comforter was probably made out of plastic and lead,
but it didn’t matter then because we didn’t know about it.
One clip showed a bottle of Magic Sand, and I cannot tell you how that transported me.
Do you remember it? How you poured it in water and watched it build? I thought Magic Sand was possibly the world’s most earth-shattering invention.
If I had found a genie that granted three wishes, I would have used at least two of them on it.
Back then, life felt slower.
No cell phone dinging all day. No constant list of headlines in front of you.
There was one entire summer where all I did was ride my bike around looking for roadkill I could look closer at. Who needs social media when you can learn lizard anatomy?
I remember World of Disney on Sunday nights.
I remember when our TV basically had one channel, so I had to go to my rich friends’ house if I wanted to watch it.
Brown shag carpet, and no remote.
Riding bikes with our friends, unreachable for hours.
We didn’t know how good we had it.
The other night, still sticking with this theme, I looked up a list of the top movies from the 80’s and 90’s.
I screenshotted 6 of the top ones, the true classics, and I numbered them and asked my 14 year old daughter, Paige, to pick a number, and that is the one we would be watching.
Thankfully, Paige loves that era of film.
It’s how she discovered two of her favorites: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and The Breakfast Club, both of which she has now watched dozens of times.
They are her “comfort movies.”
I knew I wouldn’t have to fight too hard to convince her.
She chose number 4, Pretty in Pink.
We had so much fun that night watching it.
Of course, she did have questions, like, “Were people in the 80’s not allowed to go in the sun at all, or?…” and
“So, did everyone just look like George Michael from behind back then?”
We watched it, and ate snacks, and didn’t look at our phones,
and I sighed as that old fuzzy screen and its lack of picture definition completely soothed my nervous system.
I think this is going to be the plan right now.
It’s going to be a tool in my tool belt.
Maybe I’ll track down a few red plastic pizza place cups to keep around, just to add to the vibe that I’m wanting.
It’s hard to live in a world where the news never stops.
It’s hard to have people trying to convince us all the time that we all hate each other.
I want the feel of watching a movie with friends as my bike with a banana seat lays on their lawn.
I want old toys, and catalogues, and the days stretching out before me.
The next few weeks will probably have lots of these movie nights as we make our way through the list I made of many of the classics.
I cannot let my kids live in a world where this pace and this anger is all they know.
I’m going to show them how it feels to have simple, slowed down softness,
and I guess that’s going to start with my new plan of saying,
“OK. Pick a number.”
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
