McDonald’s cherry pie makes Jeff yearn for mix tapes
I always get a little wistful this time of year, with “official” summer in the books and “weather” summer coming to a close. Leaves are falling, temps are dropping, butterflies are winterizing their homes. (Butterflies do survive the winter, right? Right? Oh Go sh PleaseTell Me They Do .)
Anyway … Anyway, one wistful thought leads to another and before you know it I’m craving a McDonald’s cherry pie from 1985. Man, do you remember those? They were deep-fried, filled with gooey cherry stuff and actual real cherries and good gracious they should bring those things back for a week or so.
They were so good. So good. And once I start thinking about deep-fried cherry pie, my mind is off to the races. Good golly gumdrops do I miss …
I used to wait outside for the mail sometimes. Magazines, letters, you name it, if it was worth reading, chances are the mailman was delivering it. Today? I check my email and Twitter when I wake up and the mail serves as a delivery method for bill collectors. I no longer get excited for the mail. Somewhere, a butterfly has lost a wing.
MTV
Oh I know MTV still exists, but I’m talking real, actual MTV when they showed music videos and not teen pregnancy. I don’t want to watch teen pregnancy. I never want to watch teen pregnancy. The only time you’d ever even see teen pregnancy on television back in the day was on ...
Very Special Episodes
“Tonight, on a very special episode of …” Those were scary, and they were infinitely more scary when your favorite sitcom got the “very special episode” treatment. Someone was dying, getting sexually molested, or engaging in drug or alcohol abuse. Put the vanilla extract down Uncle Ned (as played by Tom Hanks on “Family Ties”). For the love of God, Uncle Ned, put it down.
Mix tapes
I would spend hours making the perfect mix tape. Nothing pleased me more than finding just the right song to follow just the right song to follow just the right song.
When time was debateable
The only surefire way to know exactly what time it was was to listen to the radio on hear this: “WCBS news time is 8:24.” And you never did that. So when you were supposed to meet someone at eight o’clock, you could legit be 10 minutes late and when accused of such a thing, you could simply look down at your Swatch and innocently say, “No, I’ve got eight o’clock right now.” These days, we’re satellite tracked. You can’t be late. We all have the same time on our phones. Big Brother will not accept tardiness as an excuse.
Backseat freedom
My family had the classic Country Squire, faux-wood paneled station wagon. And sitting “all the way in the back” meant “bouncing around in the back of the car like you’re in a NASA zero-g simulator while your mom was going 75 on the highway.” These days I won’t start backing out of my driveway until my kids are in their 12-point harnesses and wearing their helmets.
Photo surprises
Every so often you’d show up to a party or a family get-together of wherever and someone will say, “Oh you gotta see this!” and it’s a picture of you on vacation in Jamaica surrounded by about a pound of marijuana with three joints in your mouth and huge buds stuck in your ear and a one in your nostril (this picture may or may not actually exist, you’ll never know) and you can laugh and enjoy it with the confidence it won’t ever end up on Facebook because Facebook didn’t exist.
Allowing yourself to do nothing
Ah, remember that? Before smartphones and computers and cable and satellite and texting and sexting and on demand and and and and and? When there were times there was just nothing to do and you might even find yourself dealing out a hand of solitaire? Yeah, I hardly remember it either, but there was a time …
Jeff Edelstein is a columnist for The Trentonian. He can be reached at jedelstein@ trentonian.com, facebook. com/jeffreyedelstein and @ jeffedelstein on Twitter.