One thing leads to another

 and another, and another. That’s the nature of links, I suppose. 

Once in a while (well, practically all the time) my Facebook page burps up Likes and Posts from many links down the chain … maybe one of my friend’s friends shares a post that his cousin shared that was put up by her stylist’s brother’s girlfriend who subscribes to an RSS feed of pictures with ironic headlines, mostly involving cats. So this stranger is indirectly affording me a glimpse into a small corner of her psyche. I didn’t ask for the peek, it just arrives. 

Usually I just scroll down past these hoping I hit on something interesting.
A couple of days ago a short mp4 video found its way up the chain to my eyes. I watched because, you know, movement and shiny things.

The all-type video listed things that the maker, evidently of my vintage, fondly remembered of his childhood summers, things like:

• Endless summer days
• Hot summer nights, no AC, sleeping with the windows open
• Crickets chirping
• A time before cell phones, PlayStation, Sega,
  the internet, crack, semi-automatics, etc.
• Cracker Jacks with great prizes at the bottom
• Double Popsicles you could split and share
• Saturday morning cartoons
• The smell of chalk erasers in school
• Kool-Aid

You get the idea. Pure nostalgia. Judging by the number of comments the video elicited, the thing had international distribution. Several of the comments underneath were of the “I feel sorry for kids today who can’t experience these wonderful memories” variety. 

Memories, hmmm … Well, your memories are your memories, and no one can experience the memories of another. For most of us, our blissful childhood summer memories have a speck of reality at the center, but in the passage of time our minds add embellishments. The mind seems to be more fluid and slippery than the binary data base we believe it to be. We can’t just call up “Summer Evening, July 24, 1959” and experience it exactly as it was. Experiences that we’ve had since … the joys, disappointments, smells, tastes, and images … tend to stick themselves to specific memories like burrs to a hiker’s socks. The resulting recollection is more of a composite of warm (or cold) feelings we’ve had over our lifetime crusted around a small kernel moment. 

The “I feel sorry for kids today…” comments, however, got me thinking. Every generation has shared memories. Baby boomers grew up with Eisenhower, Kennedy, the Cuban missile crisis, tail fins and massive chrome bumpers on cars, black and white TV, The Flintstones, Jarts, hoola hoops, Viet Nam, Elvis, and Romper Room. But, like the generation itself, memories of those things burn bright for a time, then fade like tails of a comet into history books. It is hubris to think that your memories are the benchmark for a rich and full life. It is as untrue as if I were to feel sorry for people who do not share my love of Mahler, Billy Collins, brie cheese, and Belgian ale. 

Each generation is born, lives, and dies in a span of time and area of geography. Its memories are shaped by its cultural and technological environment. Kids who grow up on Nintendo rather than Tag, You’re It will have memories just as vivid and embossed with subsequent experiences. And those memories will be different from those of the previous generation and the next generation, or from those of kids growing up in a less prosperous land where the most valuable childhood treasure may be a soccer ball made of a plastic bag stuffed with leaves.