December 14, 2024: "Best Fall," Good Ole Days, Golden Light

Today, I found myself full of nostalgia for the "good ole days."  Now, if you ask me what the "good ole days" were, I wouldn't be able to define them all that well.  I suppose it would include me not having to work five jobs; my kids being young enough still to think I was one step away from being a god; all my siblings living and healthy; and the Felon in Chief being just a two-bit real estate hustler with a bad haircut, living off his daddy's fortune. 

Billy Collins gets nostalgic, too . . . 

Best Fall

by: Billy Collins

was what we called a game we played

which had nothing to do

with a favorite autumn,

somebody else’s gorgeous reds and yellows.

no, eleven years old

all we wanted was to be shot

as we charged sacrificially into the fire

of the shooter lying prone behind a hedge,

or even better, to be that shooter

and pick off the others

as they charged the gun

each one stopping in his young tracks

to writhe and twist

aping the contortions of death

from the movies,

clutching our bleeding hearts

holding ourselves

as we lifted—a moment of ballet—

into the air then tumbled

into the grass behind our houses.

and whoever invented that game

made sure it would have

no ending,

for the one who was awarded

best fall by the shooter

got to be the next shooter

and so it went, shooting and being shot,

tearing at our cowboy shirts

trying our best

to make death look good

until it got almost dark

and our mothers called us in.

Of course, nostalgia paints the past in golden light, erasing all the struggles and pains and stresses.  It's not about objective reality.  Rather, it's a Norman Rockwell rendering of reality, wholesome and mostly untrue.  

Yet, most of the day, I was yearning for John Hughes movies and Walkmans, Molly Ringwald and River Phoenix.  My life was seemed much simpler back then.  No mortgages, car payments, or income taxes.  All I worried about was getting someone to take me to see Star Wars:  A New Hope again.  (I saw that film 27 times in the theater when it was first released.)  

I'm sure one or two or five years down the road, I'm going to be thinking back nostalgically on tonight.  Christmas tree glowing in the corner of the room.  Puppy snoring and moaning in her cage.  A full moon glowing in tree branches outside.  And Joe Biden serving as President of the United States.  (Come January 20, 2025, when the Felon in Chief takes the oath of office, the past four years are going to seem like a trip to Oz on the back of a flying monkey named Ozzie.)

Nostalgia is a retreat from unpleasant or painful presents.  An escape hatch, if you will.  The 1980s were far from perfect (Ronald Reagan was President of the United States, for God's sake!), but we had the best music.  The past four years weren't utopian, but we didn't have a person with the IQ of a rabbit in charge of the nuclear codes.  

For me, thinking backward is a retreat from the darkness I'm currently experiencing.  I remember lying on my bed, listening to the local Top 40 station, recording a hit mix of songs with my cassette player.  Billy Joel's "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" and Yes's "Owner of a Lonely Heart."  And that was the most important thing I had to do.

Saint Marty will return to reality tomorrow.  Tonight, he's going to watch bad Hallmark holiday movies and dream of white Christmases, just like the ones he used to know.  Without global warming, convicted rapists in the Oval Office, and Fox News.