Ah, the sweet smell of nostalgia wafting through the air—like a mix of Cabbage Patch Kids and patchouli oil. It’s hard to believe that once upon a time, we lived in a world where the biggest problem was whether to buy a cassette or a CD. Remember when the “skip” button was at your fingertips and not buried within the “shuffle” mode of some digital streaming service? Now we have algorithms telling us what to listen to instead of our own risky teenage instincts. That’s right, millennials, while you were battling your indecision between avocado toast and quinoa bowls, we were facing life-and-death crises over whether “Like A Prayer” would come on next or if we had to fast forward to Side B.
Imagine the days when your biggest worry was getting the tape to rewind without eating itself. You’d painstakingly craft mixtapes for every impending crush or life crisis (which typically involved a lot of angst and a mall food court). It was a time when $1.50 could get you a orange soda and one of those poorly constructed but oh-so-delicious Bon Bons that were somehow marketed as a gourmet snack. Don’t even get me started on the culinary masterpieces known as Pizza Rolls and the delicacies found in the vending machines at your local arcade. These were the elegant tastes of a generation still reeling from the excessive use of neon and denim overalls.
Of course, when we weren’t busy scouting out our next piece of seriously questionable fashion, we were honing the fine art of socializing—not through emojis or text messages, mind you, but through the sacred practice of actual face-to-face communication. Well, unless you were really shy; in that case, a careful positioning of your Walkman headphones was a legitimate barrier to unwanted conversations. If you weren’t “do not disturb” while listening to Pearl Jam, then you were subjecting yourself to the unsolicited advice of your Uncle Larry about how you need to take up football and stop listening to “that noise.” Excuse me, Uncle Larry, but I am not listening to noise; I am embracing a lifestyle choice!
Somehow, we all managed to emerge from this glorious chaos—armed with low-tech wisdom, an unhealthy obsession with the “S” in our local Blockbuster, and a hefty amount of credit card debt thanks to overpriced phone bills after hours of dialing up AOL. So here’s to us—the masters of mixtapes, the connoisseurs of Cheez Whiz, and the brave souls who survived the dark ages of dial-up internet and still managed to serve up sarcasm sharper than a pair of JNCO jeans. We might be jaded, but at least we’ll always have the sweet, sweet memories of not needing a virtual assistant to remind us how to actually be human.