Back In The Day
Looking At the Past, Forgetting the Present
In the summertime we took our sleeping bags outside, laying single file with our dad in the middle. As we slowly started to doze off, he pointed out different stars and constellations that passed beyond the wide redwood tree that took over most of the night sky. One of those nights, I remember the smell of skunk, and the thrilling feeling of having to navigate it, of having to playfully escape the skunk that might stick onto us for hours or possibly days. I never found out how long the smell could last, luckily.
Sometimes we’d actually go camping, driving east to Lake Tahoe to swim in that lake's cold snowmelt waters. One summer, I remember joyously screaming on the shore as we huddled under wet towels as rains fell on us and thunder began to roar. We’d all yell at the sound of each strike of thunder, laughing at all the excitement.
When the creek was shallow in our backyard, or the stream had completely vanished in the midst of the dry summer air, my siblings and I would take our Beanie Babies or our Mutants (action figures we destroyed in order to reassemble with hot glue) to the creek to make small puppet type movies. I can't remember what they were about, but the setting, the dappled light of the giant bay tree, the short grasses beside the dry-rock stream, were a perfect background. I remember my siblings doing a lot of work with fishing wire in order to have the characters move.
All of this happened roughly between the ages of three and eleven. There are so many more memories like this, of hot days, cool nights, idle time and myself, and whoever was around, making the most of time as much as we could. And it’s easy to idealize these times. The sleepy pace of how each moment, in my memory, moves, almost like watching some faded and lovely home movie from an old miniDV cassette. As I remember it, the streets were so quiet, disturbed only by our voices as we wandered, playing ding dong ditch on friend’s houses, searching for new skate spots in our little suburban world. It was a playful time simply because there wasn’t much to do except figure out how to entertain ourselves. Maybe because these days each moment feels to some degree filled with tasks, the drudgery of just being alive today, that I think of these childhood moments, and impulsively make it into something far more ideal than it really was—to have free time. To be bored.
But that’s the power of nostalgia to bring us into a world that never really existed.
Remembering those nights we spent on the deck were lovely, but surrounding them, I remember my siblings hitting me, me hitting them. I remember the sound of my parents bickering or fighting. I remember the foreboding quiet that always seemed to surround the dining room table. The feeling that, for some reason, suddenly, the night or one of us could turn into a tirade, as if the room itself had the power to possess any of us into fear and anger. The quiet anxiety I felt in that room the way we all must have felt it. It was something that never really left that space until recently.
I remember spending so much time wandering the streets, the creek, or when we got the internet, going online to play games, in some way to get away from that dining room. I was trying to escape the quiet anxiety and trouble that seemed to emanate from home. We didn’t want to get into fights, so we found other things to do. We sought out any little space to play.
We forget these harder to admit moments because, well, they are harder to talk about, and harder to find others to hear. Without them, our pasts would be beautiful. They would be easy and simple and there would be little to worry over. Spring could just become a time full of flowers. Summer would be just long days and cool nights. The old days would become good old days. My birthday would never have had a twinge of pain. Then again, that’s the power of rumination. Childhood was a time of pain and joy. Resting too heavily on either end distorts what it maybe actually was.
And yet, those moments of joy and play were beautiful, important to look back to in order to remember what it is I might’ve lost or gained in the time since then. There were other harder to face things in my childhood but still I’m okay with who I am, because of and despite those memories. I look back at making those videos with my siblings with pride. I loved the peace and quiet we found together as we slept outside. Those trips to Lake Tahoe taught me how to truly love the burning dry heat of my home state. Those moments are right for me to look back on with joy. It only becomes nostalgia when we forget the rest of the facts, creating a story of the past through its own erasure.
More of than not, recently I have been looking back at childhood with more longing than dread, forgetting that not all of it was so pleasant. Even when I was that young, when I didn’t have the stress of paying bills, or any concept of the greater troubles of this world, many of them created or enforced by the country which I call home, nothing was really that easy. But, lately, I’ve noticed I’ve started to begin to believe that maybe it was.
I bring up all of this because, well, I’ve been experiencing a desire to neglect the whole of the past, and by doing so, a more full story of my life. Many of us do this, and you see it online a lot lately, with people worried about the death of social media and the internet through AI slop1 and then longing for a time before, when the internet wasn’t overrun by bots. I make a perfect past in my head because the present is too troubling to face. The rise of fascism in the United States and across the world is growing, companies are taking on more and more power in political spheres which is slowly eroding people’s ability to just afford the simple things in their lives while exploiting even more people in poorer countries across the world, and by extension killing the planet, while no politician is willing or able to actually change a single thing that might positively impact the planet or our lives.
So I return to nostalgia, and the freedom of being a child. It’s an easier story to fall for, one with less work, less apocalyptic fear. But I’d like to also remember my childhood dining room the same way I’d like to remember that the internet has always been a treacherous place for ideas.
The past is a story we choose to tell. Stories will leave out facts or ideas for the clarity of the narrative, to ensure that we see the throughline, whether we are telling that story to ourselves or to others willing to listen. Dwelling in a simpler past, whether that’s a past with less of an online world, or a past free from financial hardships, always feels easier than contending with the present. To not contend with this present moment and to hide away from it by longing for a past that inevitably never really existed, is to forget that the future, just as the past is made in the present. The future is inherently unknown, but it can be shifted by our actions today. We will be living in some future, though whose future is not always easy to see. Reminiscing, or ruminating, is to hide from where things are today, where they might go, and who might take us there. Things can change for the better well-being of the planet and people.
And yet, we can look to the past, with clearer eyes, and see other paths forward. The shutdown of the United States for the pandemic in 2020, as Taylor Lorenz recently said in a video essay2, gave us a glimpse at the possibility of a more equitable future. The 1960s and 70s in the United States showed us that, within educated collectives, we have the ability to experiment and play with the prospect of better futures. Looking to the past is important, but making it into something it wasn’t, that is the danger. We can use it to help create new futures, but to use it as a balm on the present is to forget that a better future can be created. I’m still trying to figure out how to help with that vision.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-08/maybe-ai-slop-is-killing-the-internet-after-all
“Somebody Needs To Do It” video essay by Taylor Lorenz