The Good Old Days [NOT 17/4/23]

17/4/23 brightersideoflife 32
Thank you, Moira Rose, for this gem.

Hi, friends! Happy Monday!

I hope your day went well, and that it wasn’t a crummy Monday.

Is there something you miss from the past? Like a restaurant or a car or some place you used to go?

I really miss having friends who talked on the phone. I don’t mean like ye old 90s/early 00s where I would talk to friends for an hour after being in school all day with them, just in general a phone call between friends. Every friend I have now just doesn’t talk anymore, including people I’ve been friends with for over a decade who I used to talk to once or twice a month. And some conversations just don’t work via text. As much as texting is fine for some things, I’ve never been able to have conversations anything like the verbals ones where I end up laughing so hard I’m trying not to pee.

It’s one of the things I’ve felt as very much increasing loneliness since one of my besties died last year. They were the only one who still liked to talk. I’d get a call while they were driving home from work and we’d have fun times shooting the shit about nothing important for 30 minutes. Or I’d call on an evening to make weekend plans and we’d be giggling like idiots over some silly crap we did that day for a while before plans ever got made.

I’m not really sure what the reason is. I think a lot of it is people like fucking around on their phones and it’s easier (I do this too, not saying I don’t!) to unwind by scrolling tiktok videos for an hour and then it’s a situation of there’s just too much other stuff to do. It’s not that I don’t try calling people, but when I don’t get calls back, it’s pretty easy to conclude it’s just pestering people who don’t want to talk.

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32 Comments

  1. And completely unrelated to the topic I led with, just read that the racist dickbag who shot Ralph Yarl twice is fucking 85.

    Can’t wait for the “defense” to be well he’s old and not in his right mind.

  2. The whole issue of the past is tricky, because while I miss analog sound of LPs and AM radio in the car, I absolutely do not miss the way records would scratch if you had a party and people were dancing too hard, or the way the signal of a station would fuzz out in the middle of a song on a road trip.

  3. Going back to Hawaii is never the same since my two favorite restaurants closed.  One was a hole in the wall with the most amazing plate lunches, freshest fish at super cheap prices.  BBQ Ono plate for $5!!!  The other was our families gathering place called the Mandarin that had the best Szechuan Chinese food I have ever had.  The owners knew all my family & what we liked.  When they closed he gave me some of his recipes but more like ingredient lists since no quantities were included.  I have figured out close to as good on 1 or 2 dishes but not the same.

    • I had a smartphone about ten years ago with a slide out QWERTY keyboard with real buttons and it was awesome. The total volume wasn’t much different from my current phone, just a smaller screen and more thickness.

      But I’m guessing your complaints are much more substantial than that.

      • My first smartphone was a Blackberry and I loved it specifically because of its keyboard. My complaint is more, a smartphone can be a useful tool but it can become an addiction. Or maybe I guess my complaint is with social media and those who become addicted to that. Have you seen a photo recently of a crowd? I saw one a couple of weeks ago. It was a stadium and something happened and half the people in the stadium were either staring at their phones or holding them up, presumably making videos.

        I guess plus ça change. There’s a very famous photo of a packed LIRR train. It’s mostly men in Mad Men-era attire. They’re all holding up the same newspaper, probably the Herald Tribune, reading the content inside, and the screaming front page headline is “President Kennedy Dead.” But that was different. That was earth-shattering, and they were stuck on a commuter train among strangers.

        The last wedding I went to many people were distracted from the ceremony by trying to video it, and then at the reception half the people at my table spent half their time on their phones. Is there ever a time where, you know, enough is enough?

        • Smart phones make dumb people.  Raising kids during the rise of kids getting smart phones was beyond challenging.  They are the source along with social media that has caused so much depression in our kids.  I used to do wedding photography but stopped when I had to fight off family & friends with their phones to get my shots.  Even wrote it into my last few contracts but it is hard to enforce.

        • Speaking of the Kennedy assassination (and I’m not going to go all Grassy Knoll on you) one year, I think November 22, 1988, the 25th anniversary of the event, CBS replayed their tapes in real time, as if it were 1963. In 1988 that was Thanksgiving week and I had taken it off so I watched it. I was aware of the spoiler alerts, but still it was beyond unnerving.

          That’s depicted on Mad Men, of course it is, and Roger’s precious little girl gets married the following day (in 1963 it was the Friday before Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving was very late that year) so you see how the characters deal with it. Roger and his daughter are just completely pissed off because it’s an unwelcome distraction from Her Special Day, and then Roger is further incensed when he finds some of the guests clustered around a radio listening to updates when they should be focused on the wedding reception. Pete and Trudy save the day by doing the Charleston, and Roger sings a little melody in blackface, which of course no one really finds weird because it is 1963 and the wedding has a vaguely Roaring 20s theme.

          Just thought I’d contribute this.

  5. My friend, I still miss. He was a character. Miss his weird phone calls about mundane things.

    I miss having time to do stuff, fun stuff, playing video games. Don’t have shit for time.

    On a gut related one, I miss Howard Johnsons. Damn fried clams and blue/orange sherbet.

    Every trip to the States from the mid 70s to early 80s we would hit one, but after that… poof gone.

  6. There’s not a whole lot that I miss from the past. As it is, I prefer to forget as much of it as possible. Instead my nostalgia tends toward food. In this case, Usinger’s Sausage. The best kielbasa and liver sausage on the planet. If I want some these days then I have to go online and order it which means I’m dropping $100 between the sausages and the shipping so I only do it about once a year.

    • Usinger’s! There was a small market near my office and near Columbus Circle (New York, but you all knows this) that used to carry their products. I used to buy their liverwurst by the pound because it was so much cheaper than pâtè but you could pass it off as such if you lightly mashed it in a bowl with the back of a fork. I don’t know how much money I saved utilizing this party trick. Tons, probably.

    • I used to love everything banana-flavored, especially ice cream! I haven’t thought of that in decades. I wonder if one of our now-many supermarkets carries any. I will have to call around and send Better Half on a special mission. Maybe banana-chocolate swirl if I’m really lucky. And no, I may look like it, but I’m not actually pregnant. It’s just bloat.

  8. @brightersideoflife I get it. I also lost my best friend unexpectedly. It was around 15 years ago and it left a hole in my life that I can never fill. I never had many girlfriends, I know how that sounds but it’s true. Lynn was the first time I ever experienced that sort of “sisterhood.” And I finally understood what all the hype was about. She accepted me completely, and totally supported me. And like you and your friend we could talk on the phone for hours. I did all my cleaning with the phone up to my ear. And it was often about nothing, talking shit about people we knew, making fun of our families, ourselves, each other. I laughed all the time. I’ve never felt that easy familiarity with anyone before or since.

  9. I miss my previous dogs, all dozen of them. We know going in that our time together will be shorter, as they are rarely young and always in poor medical shape. The current batch of four dogs are younger than usual, 4-6 years old, and not on extreme medication. 🐕🐕🐕🐕

    • But think of it this way. They only had one life, which was spent with you, which was the best possible life. And in return you spent part of your life with them, which brought immeasurable joy, I’m sure, even through medical hardship. That’s how I think of my previous dogs.

  11. Like y’all with the previous pets, I miss Lil. I don’t exactly miss having to get up every 2-4 hours, all night long, as that last few months set in… but I miss my sweet, goofy girl, and I WOULD do all that non-sleep, if it were somehow possible to have her here again😉💖

    Something silly I miss is my old S-10 Blazers–i adored those little trucks, because they were high enough to not get “brighted out” by pickups with jerkishly-bright headlights, small enough to get *ok* gas mileage, and had a wide enough wheelbase that–while the center of gravity *was* just to the right of your hip-area if you were sitting in the driver’s seat, they were *also* incredibly stable, if you *knew* how to properly handle that information.

    They were small enough that they could park almost anywhere, but “big enough” that people didn’t act like *total* asshats to you on the road, heavy enough to handle big wind-gusts, and the versatility of carrying people *or* moving all your stuff by yourself w/o hiring a moving truck was AWESOME.

    As a short woman, they also had really decent sight-lines, and very few bad blind spots.

    The other thing I miss–just because it’s gotten difficult to find, is Dentyne Cinnamon-flavored chewing gum… either the old fashioned stick type, OR the “giant chicklet” version…

    Trident cinnamon is ok *flavor*-wise, buuuut after a while of chewing it, that “overly-soft” texture starts to become literally gag-inducing for me…

    Dentyne “tightened up” as you chewed it–it didn’t get “softer.” And I wish I could find a good spicy cinnamon gum like it easily again (Target *used* to carry it, buuuuut they discontinued it z few years back, at most stores).

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