Would You Go Back If You Could?

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All this thinking about the extra time I seemed to have as a kid (as well as some of the great comments I got on my Time/Space/Flow post) got me thinking about whether I’d actually want to go back to any particular time in my youth. 

Answer?  Not so much.  Sure, I’d gladly cherry pick certain times to relive and enjoy – but there are many ages, trends, stretches of time, and events I just plain wouldn’t want to live through again for anything. 

Here’s a toddle down memory lane for folks of a Certain Age – would you want to relive this stuff?

• Elephant pants.  Remember those gigantaur bell bottoms?  Extra points if they (1) were made of a groovy love/peace/flower print; (2) were also “hiphuggers”; or (3) were held up by a wide belt with a humongous metal buckle that could have doubled as a mace. 
• Watching the Viet Nam War every evening before dinner.
• Streaking.  So vulgar!
• The Watergate Hearings.  Remember the summer of 1973??  I was 9.  No Flintstones?  Thanks a lot, Tricky!  If you missed that summer, you can follow the link to watch it all again!  Who knew?
• Leisure suits.  Oh, my God, please no one light a match!!   My dad had a forest green one, with a coordinating shirt that had a wild green and white print.  How could someone who wore those sharp suits in the 40s and 50s resort to such a thing?  Don’t you think men should have revolted?  (Well, they were revolting, but not in the way I mean…)
• Bad eyeglasses.  At ten, my first pair of specs were octagonal wire rims – oohh, nice.  Then I had aviator-shaped glasses with bad photogray lenses in junior high (and I wondered why I was a pariah).  Later, I had the large, round tortoiseshell frames that covered half my face.   All so pretty!  Contact lenses finally saved me from myself.  I never had the ones with the stems that came out the bottoms of the frames, but my mom did – and they were bright red!
• The Bump. 
• Poodle perms.  Remember when you used a plastic hair pick instead of a comb?  AAAAHHHHHH!!!!!
• Weird Al Yancovic.  Seriously.
• Men’s suits, only with skirts, on women.  Remember those awful little foulard bow ties that were either pink, blue, or yellow – to match the only three colors of blouses you could find?  Better yet, how about
• Late 80s women’s business attire.   Padded shoulders, huge geometric shapes, big patent leather belts, and odd color combinations (like the bumble bee look of bright yellow and black).  Eeewww!  (It looked really good with my perm, though!)
• Herve Villachaiz yelling “da plane, boss, da plane!”
• Iran-Contra.

And then there’s the thought of living sans cell phone, DVR, hair wax, microwave, sunscreen, cilantro, internet (much less wireless internet), e-mail, seat warmers, bike helmets, i-pods, microbrews, retinol, and all of the other modern medical miracles that bring us to this day where 40 is the new 30.   

What do you remember?

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Filed under Lifebits, What's With That?

Tags: fashion, life, nostalgia