now is the good ol' days

My kids heard someone talk at length about how things were better when “we” grew up in the 70s/80s. The speech was the whole “we had it good because we were drinking from garden hoses/riding bikes without helmets/latchkey kids watching Gilligan’s Island and drinking KoolAid/no participation trophy” thing. My kids asked if it was true.

My husband and I turned to the kids and simultaneously said, “No it wasn’t. It’s better now.”

(Then we laughed because we hadn’t planned on saying that, and we’ve never talked about the idea before. But he and I tend to agree on fundamental things. This is why we’re married.)

(Also note: I try to remind the kids that they can make up their own opinions and don’t have to agree with me, just because I say something. So, if they wanted to believe it was better in the 15th century or whatever, by all means, let them research it and let me know why. I won’t argue. I’ll just listen. Same goes for you reading this.)

But honestly, as far as I’m concerned, these are the good old days. Now is the good time. We just have to remember that.

You can look around and see all kinds of problems, major ones, and I’m not going to deny that those things are happening.

But there have always been major problems.

And I can point to things that are objectively (at least in my opinion) better. Car trips for one. Oh, how I wished for a television in the car when I was on long, boring trips as a kid. 

Car safety and reliability is major league better than it used to be. We get warnings before tires are low, gas runs out, and so on.

Safety features in general are better now. Last night, we were watching Stranger Things, set in the early 80s, and there was a quarry scene without any fence surrounding it, which shocked my kid. We explained to her that we learned from dangerous accidents and generally prevent them. (Of course, we’re now warned not to eat laundry detergent, but there are so many things that are light years safer since my childhood.)

Besides these sort of innovation and tech issues, I also personally like the way that society is going. I like seeing people who are positive and open to diversity and who include lots of points of view and backgrounds in their lives. I was exposed to so much casual homophobia, misogynism, fat phobia, racism, ableism, and all kinds of other things when I was a kid, and I feel like there is so much more understanding now. It really makes me happy. (Is it perfect? No. But a quick tour of Instagram or TikTok tells me that we’re in good hands with the next generation.)

I guess all I want to say, is while I can have as much nostalgia as the next person—even nostalgia for things I never had—now is the only time we have. Might as well make it the best we can.