I miss looking forward to Saturday mornings. I miss the time when 10 pm was the beginning of the evening, not the end of the day. I miss my hair. I miss getting drunk with a room full of friends and then solving the problems of the universe. I miss having everyone I care the most about within a ten mile radius. I miss snowball fights. I miss engaging in pointless activities and not caring that they're pointless. I miss being a stagehand. I miss being able to get up fifteen minutes before I had to leave the house. I miss Shadow, and Midnight, and Dinker, and Tai, and Taj, and White Cat, and Grey Cat, but I don't miss that yappy Schnauzer. I miss D&D and late night cable. I miss sleepovers. I miss hot dogs and macaroni and cheese and cheap frozen pizza. I miss the morning headache that tells you you had too much fun the night before. I miss the Plaza Twin, and the Village Green, and the Cross County Eight, and the Town Theater. I miss the Lake Worth Playhouse. I miss my mom making a grocery bag, paper of course, full of popcorn and then bundling us into the station wagon in our jammies to go to the drive-in movies. I miss jammies. I miss not knowing so much, but thinking I knew more. I miss my mom, and I think I miss my dad, but I just don't remember. I miss Star Trek, and The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Wild Wild West, and Donny and Marie, and Space: 1999, and Battlestar Galactica(before it was all serious and gritty). I miss the Superfriends, and Johnny Quest, and Samson and Goliath, and anything narrated by Gary Owens. I miss picking my breakfast cereal based on which prize was in the box, not by the nutritional content. I miss breakfast cereal. I miss asking what's for dinner, instead of being asked.
And if you're reading this, it means I miss you, too, even if we've never actually met yet.
What do you miss?
10 comments:
I miss setting up hot wheels track in an elaborate course over furniture and through loops and curves so we could put two marbles on the track at the same time and race to see which marble "raced best." And I miss naming the most consistent winners, so it was less a competition between me and my sister (or my son and daughter) and more about marble-e-marble.
I miss Pong. You heard me. Pong. No elaborate storyline. No scantily-clad women or bloody death scenes. Just two lines and a dot.
And, before the era of VCR/DVR or pervasive syndication, I miss that sense of knowing that right after school I had just enough time to heat up a pop-tart in time to watch Gilligan's Island back-to-back with Star Trek.
And it didn't matter if I'd seen them all before. In fact, that only added to the anticipation.
-GAB...
I miss getting out of bed at 11:00 PM to sit with my mom and dad after he got home from working swing shift, The Tonight Show when Johnny's hair was still brown, and how if you kept the TV on after The Tonight Show was over, you'd hear the National Anthem and see the screen go to a test pattern.
I miss boring Sundays that you thought would never end, swimming lessons at the Y, and when eating in a restaurant was a special occasion. I miss people getting dressed up to fly on airplanes. I miss how it feels to be a teenager on a Friday night with a newly cashed paycheck and a tankful of gas.
I miss new Pee-Chees that everyone would immediately draw on in exactly the same way -- polka dots on the tennis player's shorts, a knife in the hand of the basketball player, the lead guy on the track team carrying a torch like the one on the Statue of Liberty. I miss Tang and Space Sticks. I miss the old Rainier Brewery and coffee made in percolators. I miss being the youngest person in the room.
I miss a lot of those things as well... argh, aging sucks!
I miss watching cartoons for hours and not having to do anythig but watch tv, eat and pee...
Miss you too xox
I miss thinking I was really getting away with something staying up past midnight on weekdays to watch Monty Python and Doctor in the House on PBS.
I miss Monty Python. I also miss Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, which kinda scares me.
I miss leaving the house without a plan and knowing I'll have fun no matter what. Nowadays, I need to know what I'm doing to actually leave the house, before it didn't matter as long as I was out of the house. Le sigh.
I miss hanging out at the library after school. I miss "The Tree". I miss "hitting the road". I miss Astro-Boy and Kimba the White Lion. I miss Skipper Chuck. I miss going out and playing pool with my friends. I miss just plain going out with my friends. I miss just hanging out with my friends. I miss my friends that are gone. I miss my friends that are still here, but I don't get to see nearly enough.
SKIPPER CHUCK!!!! I miss him, too.
I miss finding Fantasy Island genuinely scary. I miss riding my bike and thinking the hours spent swimming, eating popsicles and reading were endless.
I miss being able to get insanely excited about something as mundane as hot dogs.
I miss my old and 30 pounds lighter body. I miss treading the boards. I miss Amber, Maeti, Rocky and Pochie. I miss Punkin and Rani. I miss J needing his mommy more often than he does now. I miss being 34 when you (and the rest of the group) taught me how to be a kid again (or be a kid forever?). I miss YOU.
I miss time spent with dear friends, and innocence about the world, and all my old pets. I don't think I want that innocence back, though. I like feeling excited and hopeful about my future, and I want to share that with everyone I care about.
Many hugs, Rick. Life may be somewhat frustrating for you now, but I do not doubt there are wonderful parts in it for you too, and that they will continue to grow. Be well, old friend.
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