Nostalgia

Nostalgia is the wistful, fond remembrance of a time or memory of the past. It's the longing for what once was but no longer is - your childhood, a past relationship, the great time you had at a sleepover just last weekend. Nostalgia can be invoked through almost anything that somehow reminds you of a better time in your life.

The first song, "Rock Around the Clock", makes me recall a '60's diner with pretty blonde girls, donned in cherry red lipstick and polka-dotted dresses, cheerily dancing with slick, black-haired boys. The next song, "Sixteen Candles", reminds of a slow dance in a '50's high school, much like the dance scene in Grease.

Driving down the neighborhood where my babysitter used to live invokes very strong nostalgia for me. So many memories of my childhood were born there, after getting off the third grade bus everyday and rushing into the backyard to play cops and robbers or imagine that we were all characters in a TV show. I'd spend long hours with all of my elementary school friends at her house playing video games, role-playing, eating ice cream, or swinging on the swingset from the afternoon hours until the sunset disappeared. In the winter I remember her setting up a green Christmas tree with the same gaudy red and gold lights every season; even today, whenever I drive past her house in December, I briefly see those same red and gold flashes of color and I think of simpler times I wish I could return to.