“With a photographic memory
I could live in a time that used to be.”– Greg Ham

October seemed like a perfect time to go back and visit the alma mater. It just so happens that the weekend I picked was also homecoming weekend. It just so happens that the weekend I picked happened to be the 25th reunion for my graduating class.

That in of itself is a long story since I graduated in December. So, I was class of 1996, but I really wasn’t. It should have been 1997, but these things are complicated. I caught myself doing the same thing everyone else does when they see people honored at halftime of the football game. My first thought was, “who are all of those old people down there.” That thought process quickly switched to, “gee, do I know any of them?”

As I was pointing out landmarks to my wife and daughter it hit me like a ton of bricks. There was more different than there was the same. It’s then that you can’t really control the flood of emotions. It’s an unholy mixture of nostalgia, jealousy, and lack of connection. I could say the same of the new high school that sits on the same plot of land as my old one. I know people of my age and older can relate to these feelings.

I never knew why older people behaved the way that they did. The usual sentiment when someone wanted to renovate a school or make additions was to utter that “it was good enough for me so it should be good enough for you.” So, why do we need that new gym or that new addition with new science classrooms? Why do we need to spruce up the library? Why do we need to invest in new infrastructure so the kids can use their technology in the building? We didn’t need any of that crap.

If you don’t check yourself it is fairly easy to find yourself going down a different rabbit hole. It’s easy to find yourself talking about how unfair it is that these kids have it so nice. Why do they get the nicer dorms? Why did they get the new student center? It’s not fair that they got all of this new stuff. Think of what we would have done with all of this new stuff.

Give into those feelings and you become “get off my lawn” guy. It’s a slow but slippery descent that can creep up on you seemingly overnight. One minute you feel like a progressive kind of guy (or gal) that seems to know what’s hip and what’s going on. The next you’re just lost in a haze and wondering what the kids are doing and how they got to be so young.

Get off my lawn guy is bitter and hates change. Get off my lawn guy doesn’t want to spend any tax dollars improving things because they were good enough for him (or her) and they should be good enough for you. Get off my lawn guy is the one that starts every story off with a “back in my day…” Get off my lawn guy is the guy (or gal) that we all swore we would never become when we were young.

Some of us have become get off my lawn guy. Some of us haven’t. The deciding factor is how we deal with change. I never quite understood how people became stick in the mud conservatives when I was young. Now that I’m not so young I understand. It’s equal parts jealousy and equal parts nostalgia. The trouble is that it simultaneously was never as good as we remember it and it was also better than our parents had it. That’s the conundrum that get off my lawn guy can never reconcile.