posted
I have no project involved that requires knowing this. But hey, I'm snoopy, and I figure we're all pretty much guinea pigs for each other anyway.
So, my question is: What single thing will most reliably cause you to feel nostalgic?
Is it perhaps a chocolate cake? An episode of I love Lucy? The smell of perfume or something cooking?
posted
For me, it would depend on what it was making me nostalgic for.
Certain Christmas songs (there are three kinds, you know? 1--religious, 2--secular, and 3--winter songs that have nothing to do with Christmas but are only sung at Christmas time) make me nostalgic for my childhood.
Bagpipe music makes me nostalgic for my heritage.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think music in some form or another is what is most likely to make me nostalgic for any of the things I get nostalgic about.
Smells are supposed to trigger memories, but I can't think of any at the moment that make me nostalgic.
posted
Hearing the song "self-esteem" by the Offspring. German Christmas songs and the smell of the Christmas Market in Germany. Hoagies from Wawa.
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
Funny you should post this. A wave of nostalgia caught me off guard just yesterday. For me, the thing that causes this feeling most reliably is an event that highlights how time has influenced the people I care most about. Seems you prompted me to write a piece of flash fiction.
Eric
Yesterday morning I was watching a high school football game, the last one of the season for the freshman team. Our team was undefeated for the season, and the game was close. My son, on the second string offensive line, spent the first three quarters on the sidelines.
You have to understand, I’m not a big football fan. If my son hadn’t been out there, I would rather have watched paint dry than stand outside for over an hour on a chilly New England November morning. After a bad call from the referee, in which our team was cheated out of a fourth down, and a few of the dads harassed the referees, the coach barked “blue line.” My son sprang onto the field.
He assumed the position he’s played for five years, all through his Pop Warner career, since he was 9. He sprinted out, yelled “huddle” in such an aggressive football voice it belonged in the movies, and his team mates closed around him. A tangle of white jerseys and gold helmets fluttered for a few tense seconds, and then broke. Eric jogged towards the opposing team with the ball. He assumed the three point stance that signaled the team’s readiness to start the next play.
And then it hit me, and it wasn’t overly sentimental. My husband felt it at the same time and commented. Five short years ago we laughed at him, the way he yelled “huddle” and tried with all his might to make his high pitched voice sound masculine. I found it both satisfying and a scary, to think of him as a young man.
posted
I never need a cause to feel nostalgic. I constantly wish to return to my homeland, far away, long ago, and much happier than anything I've yet encountered here.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Certain songs will always do it, of course. But what really really does it for me is a cool afternoon when the sun gives everything that golden hue. On those days I long to be a kid again.
Posts: 130 | Registered: Apr 2007
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posted
I second Roy's and add the Plaza Drive-in. What could be better than bugs biting me, while I'm drinking Orange Crush and watching a movie outside? Seriously - I really miss it. I'd like to get a DVD of those old intermission commercials. Posts: 579 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
The movies Mame and Star Wars, and the recent rush of toys from the 80s flooding children's toy shelves this year (ie Cabbage Patch Kids, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles, He-Man, Easy Bake Ovens) are the things that have been making me nostalgic lately.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Sep 2004
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