Tag Archives: nostalgia

Going to miss them

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We had our grad event last night. Seven performances, mostly from Grade 12’s, and student speeches that left me teary eyed. This one hit me harder than most. These grads feel more like family than students.

I’m realizing that I’ve got some work to do to connect with the other grades next year because it seemed that any time I was out of my office, this was the cohort I gravitated to. Every year seems to offer something a little different. Many students in this group would visit the office almost daily. Grade 12’s need to sign in when they don’t have a first block class, and my secretaries would have full 5 minute conversations with these students. Inevitably I’d get pulled in too.

I get a little nostalgic every year around this time, but I have to say that this grad class was really something special and I’m going to miss them!

Old School Internet

Our students decided on ‘Old School Internet’ as the theme for this year’s school yearbook. But of course at a maximum age of 18, none of our students actually knew what it was like. So, for my principal’s message, I tried to give them a little taste of what they missed.

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It’s fun for students today to have something like ‘Old School Internet’ as a Yearbook theme, but as someone who ‘lived’ it, let me tell you that you don’t know the pain it caused. Here’s an example: A little-known fact about me is that I designed and patented a bicycle lock. To do this, I had to do a lot of research because a patent can not infringe on other previous patent designs. So back in the old internet days I would have to log onto the internet using my phone (cue the retro sound for this that brings back instant but not gratifying nostalgia)… then I’d go to the slow and clunky US Government Patent Office website and every search would take 15-30 seconds to load. Then I’d see a patent I’d be interested in and that would take 15-plus seconds to load. I’d read about a patent that seemed interesting to look at and I’d try to load the first image to see what it looks like… If I was lucky, it would load in 45 seconds and often it took over a minute. Sometimes the image wouldn’t give me enough information and so I’d have to check the next image… cue the elevator music going through my brain as I impatiently wait and wait and wait for the next image to load… Then I’d realize that I wasn’t interested in that patent and would need to start all over again… And then my wife would need the phone and I’d have to disconnect from the internet so that she could make a call.

So enjoy the nostalgic ‘Old School Internet’ pages in this yearbook, but make no mistake, you are extremely lucky that you don’t have to live in this retro era of internet access… Where you were tethered to a very, very slow phone wire, and every click tested your patience.

(Yearbook cover by Ena S.)

It was special

The reason we gathered wasn’t a happy one, but we took the opportunity to gather.

I became a teacher in 1998, and I joined a staff where 14 of 28 of us were brand new with another 2 teachers that had less than a year’s experience. It was Como Lake Middle School, and over the next 9 years I worked with an absolutely incredible staff.

We learned so much together. We had so much fun. When I speak to former students from that era they all share one or more of these quotes:

“We could tell that you liked being teachers.”

“We could tell you were all friends, liked each other, and liked coming to school.”

“We could tell you liked us and cared about us.”

“You guys made middle school fun.”

I thought I’d try high school or another school after 5 years, and I stayed for 4 more because it was too hard to let go of such a fantastic community. These people helped sculpt me as an educator and a leader.

Connecting with them yesterday reminded me of what an amazing group of people I ‘grew up with’ as an educator.

I feel blessed to know these people.

Alone, not Lonely

I’m fortunate to live a life surrounded by people I love and who love me. I don’t take this for granted, it truly is a blessing and a gift. I feel lucky to have this, and I know not everyone does.

I also feel fortunate that I have always enjoyed alone time. To me, moments of solitude are precious as well. As a kid, I spent a fair bit of time on my own. I shared this yesterday,

“I grew up on a dead end street, and there were no kids my age nearby. This was in Barbados, and my grandparents owned a motel (actually rental apartments) on our street. I had a few friends that visited yearly but a lot of summer days I spent either playing with my younger sister or an older cousin when he’d put up with me. Or, I played on my own. I had quite an amazing imagination and could entertain myself for hours.”

I was often alone and never felt lonely.

My grandparent’s house was across the street and I probably spent more waking hours in that house than in my own. It was like their house was the main house and ours was our sleeping quarters. I remember driving my grandmother crazy. I’d go to her dining room table on one end of her huge kitchen, a massive table that could easily seat 12, and often did for dinner, and I’d pace around it.

Flat footed, I’d walk circles around it, my feet slapping against the tiles. Twenty, thirty, fifty times I’d circle the large table in a meditative state of imagination. Like an autistic child stimming, I’d find pleasure in the repetition of motion and sound as I circled the table. Externally I was in a monotonous or boring behavioural loop. Internally I was in an imaginative world far removed from my stimming body.

Alone, not lonely. By myself and fully enthralled, even entertained. Until my grandmother interjected. “Boy, what’s the matter with you?”

She wasn’t being mean, she was concerned. I’m sure she was thinking, ‘What’s my grandkid doing, stuck in an en endless loop, mindlessly circling my table?’

“Stop that boy, why don’t you go outside and play?”

“I’m fine.”

“Go play outside. It’s nice out.’

So, I’d go outside and find somewhere else to be comfortably alone. But I’d often find my way back to circle the big table. A place of comfort, shaded from the hot sun, and feeling the cool kitchen tiles with my bare feet.

I may not take being surrounded by family and friends for granted, but I have always known that solitude is comfortable for me. Nowadays I tend to fill my alone time with audio books and podcasts. This is partly because I have tinnitus and quiet time is no longer quiet, it is interrupted by a continuous tone in my ears. So, I fill the quiet with external input. It’s also because I love to learn and find joy in learning on my own time.

So now I have less true ‘empty’ time compared to when I was a kid. I’ve come to realize that my writing time is my quiet time. This is my time of solitude, just me and my thoughts. Me in silence, alone every morning. Thinking. Writing. Absorbed in my own words, my own world. Alone. At peace, and very comfortable. I love that I never feel lonely when I’m by myself. This, like being surrounded by loved ones, is a blessing and a gift, and I cherish it.

The past and the push

When you hear great athletes talk about practice, they know what it means to push themselves. When they miss a shot, lose an easy opportunity, they don’t give up, they don’t negative self-talk, they double down and give more than they thought they could. When they are in a game and everything is on the line… there’s one more offensive rush, one more play to decide the game, they are 100% present with a singular focus.

I’m not a natural athlete, and like I said before, “…sometimes I could get in the zone. Sometimes the game slowed down for me and I could see more action around me. Sometimes I could see the play forming and feel the rhythm of the game. I didn’t have a switch I could turn on, I didn’t know what I could do to put myself in the zone. I didn’t have control of it.”

I wasn’t an athlete that could choose to get into that zone, it found me. And it might not have found me enough, but I have strong memories of those moments, I remember them and how powerful they were. But they are all in the past… and I find that hard. I want those moments again.

Perhaps I need to start archery again? Maybe I just need a regular workout buddy? I don’t know what will get me back to that, being someone who no longer does organized sports? What I do know is that I miss it. This isn’t about regret, it’s like nostalgia, yet different. It’s a yearning to feel the push, to feel the relentless drive, to be a reliable force in the pursuit of excellence.

It’s about feeling the push in the present.

Practicality over sentimentality

My brother-in-law was speaking to my father-in-law about moving into an assisted living home from a rancher. He said, “I guess practicality needs to be a priority over sentimentality,” and my father-in-law agreed.

Moving isn’t easy. Downsizing isn’t easy. Letting go of things with sentimental value isn’t easy.

The knowledge that ‘we can’t take it with us’ on the next journey anyway offers little solace. Furniture, framed pictures, books, souvenirs, trinkets, antiques, old treasures and keepsakes all hold memories within them. Reflections of the past stir, and the desire to hold on to yet another item, another memory, pulls at the heartstrings.

Eventually realization kicks in… practicality over sentimentality. You just can’t take everything with you.

Music and time

There are songs that send me back in time. I hear them and I’m suddenly in another era.

‘Heart of Glass’ by Blondie or Bob Marley’s ‘I Shot the Sherif’ takes me back to 7-9 years old.

Led Zeppelin’s ‘All of my Love’ sets me back into my friends house, it was 1979, the album In Through the Out Door came out and my friend called me to say “Get over here and listen to this.” Then he played ‘All of my Love’ over and over while playing and perfecting the piano part.

‘You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)’ by Dead or Alive makes me think of a dance floor and New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ sends me back to a university ski trip that I’d be better off not remembering… end yet I love the flashback I get.

Speaking of skiing, I got to know my wife on trips up to Whistler where she shared a group rental chalet. I remember our weekend drives to the chalet every time I hear R.E.M.’s ‘Night Swimming’.

Music is a powerful memory builder, and some songs take me back in time. Do they do that for you?

Fishing and time

There is a special type of time distortion that happens when I go fishing. First of all, it’s not something that can be rushed. You’ve probably never heard the phrase, “Hurry up and fish.” Fishing takes patience, and time goes slowly.

Time also shifts a different way for me when fishing. I can get nostalgic about past fishing experiences, and feel like a kid again. I can get enveloped into a different world where time goes backwards and I feel young again.

And then there is the simple appreciation of the time spent fishing, whether in solitude or with a friend. Fishing time doesn’t need to be filled with conversation. There is comfortableness in silence. There is the sound of casting and reeling which symbolizes the passage of time, like a ticking clock, it can be heard again and again. Until the pattern is interrupted by catching a fish… speeding up time and bringing a new sense of urgency to the situation.

And here’s the really wonderful thing about fishing: even if I don’t catch anything, it was still time well spent.

Generation bump

It’s the first one in our family. My niece, my sister-in-law’s daughter, is getting married today. This is the start of a new chapter for our family. I haven’t been to a wedding in many years, but they will become more frequent in the coming years.

It’s a little surreal to realize that we are now the parent generation. We are the sandwich generation often thinking (and sometimes worrying) about both our parents and our kids. We are the adults. That sounds silly to say, but I’m probably not the only one that questions how I got to this phase of life, how I’m not the kid still trying to figure things out?

New life adventures lay ahead, new firsts in a new chapter of our lives.

The cost of a photograph

Back in July, 2019, when I started writing daily, I wrote ‘Photographs in my mind’. In it I spoke nostalgically about the era of print film and the unknown of if I got the shot I thought I did, until after photos were developed. I also wrote about the photos I ended up not taking, and how some of those are more memorable than the ones I did take. Here is the end of the post with one particular shot that came to mind today.

There was the shot I lined up at Pike Place in Seattle, of an older man sitting on the hood of a parked car enthralled in a book, while cops on the street behind him tended to a fender-bender. I can still see the image that I did not take, feeling like I was invading his privacy.

We seem so much more free to take photos now, always having a camera in our pocket, and not a concern of the cost of taking one more shot.

But of all the shots I didn’t take, the photographs that still linger in my memory. These come to me from an era when film was the only option and the cost of the next shot lingered in my mind.

Today I thought of a different kind of cost, not financial, but maybe social, cultural, or personal. I thought of the potential photo I didn’t take above, and how I felt that I would have been invading this man’s privacy, stealing a moment from him. This made me think of children having photographs and videos shared on social media by parents. Precious moments, but also embarrassing ones. I then thought of photos shared without permission, voyeuristic images shared in confidence then reshared in anger, more often than not by a vindictive, jilted, or just plain mean ex-boyfriend.

I thought of photographs that perpetuate stereotypes, or promote cultural exploitation. I thought of videos that show people at their worst going viral and how they typecast a person on the bases of a single act, one transgression, an embarrassing moment memorialized as the defining of a one-dimensional character.

We don’t live in the film era anymore. We live in an era that is not just witnessed, but fully documented. And I wonder, what is the price? What costs are we paying for the free availability of endless videos and photographs?