I graduated high school in 1989. 30 effing years ago. We all joke and say things like “it feels like yesterday.” No. It feels like 30 years ago and by that I mean a long time ago. Today marks the 89th day in a row that I have written. It also doesn’t feel like yesterday. I can go back and read random posts from the middle of February and not remember writing them at all. Just like complete years in the 90’s.

I am incredibly nostalgic and I think this is why I love re connecting with people via social media (and sometimes in person, but mostly online). I love recalling the past, and not in a “back in my day...”sort of way. I love hearing Cocaine by Eric Clapton and remembering that in 4th grade I spend 3 or 4 days with the secretary (Marie and Jimmy Dubuisson?) of a doctor who’s practice was next to my dad’s and I was walking down their street and heard that song playing out of a trailer I walked by. I remember playing Monopoly with them and crushing them. I remember I took school pictures that week and I combed my hair differently than I ever did. I also got stung 4 times by bees on the back of my knee and it swelled so badly that I limped for the next week. These memories flood back from hearing the beginning riff of Cocaine.

I won’t bore you with a litany of other bizarre vivid memories or a lack thereof from the last 47 years. I just want to remind you to remember them. No one else has this catalog of nonsense documented and a small break in the day to remember them will hopefully fill you with contentment. Like the kind of content you feel when you jump in a pool and then lay on the concrete in the hot sun. That’s what nostalgia feels like to me.

I get that some of you (all of us) also have bad memories that are conjured up the same way. Of loss. Of trauma and of strife. The other day I was at Exxon pumping gas and the song Erotic City by Prince came on over their Muzak system. But not an instrumental. The actual song. I couldn’t believe it. This was the B side to Let’s Go Crazy and I had it on a 12 in single. My dad heard the lyrics, took it off the record player and smashed it with a hammer. The lyrics aren’t safe for work. Yet a mere 32 years after writing it, Prince can be heard singing “making love till your cherry’s gone,” at an Exxon in Baton Rouge. Unfortunately we don’t really get to decide when the nostalgia machine is going to turn on.

The only other thing that conjures up nostalgia with as much ferocity as music are smells. Specifically shampoos. I can immediately be getting ready to go out for a night in 1987 if I smell Pert Plus. It’s like the Smith’s are on and I’m about to drive to Gulfport Lake and stand around for 4 hours. Ahhh high school.

There really isn’t a greater point to all this other than I thought about it this morning. I didn’t even hear any nostalgic songs and we don’t use Pert Plus.

I just needed something for the 89th post.

#hugsandhi5s