Nostalgias

After my mom and dad divorced in 1990, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents if I wasn't with my mom. It wasn't until I was 8 or 9 that I got to see my dad more than a few times per year (or at least it felt that way), but I still remember some of it. Like how he gave me a Playmobil Truck, a crane, a Lego truck that I built at my grandparents New Year's Eve party in 1992(?)...

And a lot of my memories of my father or grandparents somehow seem to be linked to movies. 

Crocodile Dundee always reminds me of my grandpa, because we used to watch them together. The James Bond movies on the other hand remind me of my father, because I got to watch them on video (kids, google it!) when I was actually too young for it.

My mom wouldn't even let me watch harmless movies (I never saw Edward Scissorhands!) and sometimes I think that that's why I became such a huge fan of movies. To me, they represent windows into a time that's already gone now, a "better" time.

Now, every generation seems to have this feeling. Just go to YouTube and check some songs from some era and people will say "this was real music, our era was the best, it will never be the same". And they aren't wrong. It's normal that we feel this way as we grow older. I guess it's because getting older is still something we are not always fully aware of or that's difficult to understand.

So having movies or music or books or pictures that help us to remind these times seems like a nice thing to me :). 

My "poison" are mostly 80s movies, although I also enjoy anything from the 60s to 10s. 

Looking at those times (I was born 85 and turned 5 just as 1990 ended), I obviously don't have many real memories about it, but I still have this yearning and wish I could live in that time. Life seemed slower and less convenient, yet it also had some new things that seemed groundbreaking then.

My favourite James Bond movies came out in 1987 and 1989 respectively and especially with the latter, I have great memories of the day I first saw it. Even my dad remembers that I told him that this was "the best day of my life".

Back then, he had picked me up after school and we went to Stuttgart (until 2010, going to Stuttgart, the biggest city of my area always was like a small adventure) for some window-shopping. I still remember how happy I was in those electronic stores that sold things such as VHS tapes, PC Games, had Super Nintendo sets to play and of course CDs. 

We also ate at McDonalds or one of those places that can make your day when you're still a kid and happy so easily. 

In one of the department stores, I got one of those free magazines Nintendo used to release and that was great too!

After our shopping trip, I got to watch "Licence to Kill" for the first time (rated 16 or above!) anr I loved it! Truth be told, I am not even sure if it IS the best Bond or it is just the nostalgia, but the opening and end music always make me feel quite melancholic and sad.

To top it off, I got to sleep at grandma's place that day, so yeah, it was a really amazing day and I happily read my Nintendo magazine while we all ate dinner together and was daydreaming about all the games I wanted one day. 

Now that I think of it, we did that a lot back then (or at least I did): read some PC or game magazine or even a Lego catalog and we dreamt of how much fun it would be to play with it. We call that Vorfreude in German, the joy or happiness before something. 

Nowadays, we can get pretty much everything we want at almost any time and it has made so much less special:(. I mean, even back into the late 90s, you had to wait 6-12 months to rent a video (or dvd if you could afford a player, which cost like 2000$ then) of a movie that was just in the cinema. And my dad had MANY videos, so I loved visiting and watching them.

Every Friday and Saturday, we would watch movies (mostly 80s and 90s) and dad usually fell asleep when the second started after drinking too much strawberry bubbly and eating peanut flips 🤣.

So maybe this is also where I became kind of an insomniac? 

Still, I do miss this time and the feelings that came with it. It felt like family and it probably made many of those movies we saw much, much better in our mind than they are. 

I mean movies like "Baby's Big Day" or "Romancing the Stone" aren't exactly Oscar winners, but boy, can I still remember the previews or even some of the commercials from 27-30 years ago...

Do you feel this way too sometimes? If yes, about what? In which decade would you want to live and why?