What makes you most nostalgic?

[Gianna]

After reading @Justin 's post about Toys R Us I am feeling a bit nostalgic. 

Is there anything that makes you guys feel that way? Perhaps a time in your life, a vacation, certain music?

[socrates63]

The 80s gives me the feelz. Looking back now, the first half of the decade was extremely influential to an impressionable kid. That's when I discovered Atari, D&D, computers, Star Blazers, and 50s 60s 70s TV show re-runs. The second half of the 80s was when I developed my taste in music as a teen. 

As I've gotten older (now in my early 50s), I find myself looking back and enjoying all the things that I enjoyed during the 80s more than any other time in my life. My kids, who have been the center of family life for the past 20 years, are now older, so I now have more opportunity to reflect on myself and the life I had before them. For some, I suppose it may be mid-life crisis. For me, it's simply a time to reflect and appreciate the past experiences that shaped who I am today. I think the process started two years ago when I attended my high school reunion (photo below). It was the 30th anniversary, and it was the first reunion that I attended. Since then, I've re-connected with Atari consoles and computers, and I find myself here 🙂.

Edited August 29, 2020 by socrates63

[Gianna]

That's very nice @socrates63 !! ☺️

[StormSurge]

Great question @Gianna!

I'm always feeling nostalgic. My mind spends so much time in the past.

There's not one thing that makes me feel nostalgic, it's everything. My issue is that I used to just feel nostalgia from things from my childhood (late 70s & 80s) but now that I'm older, it's stuff from the 90's & early Aughts (sp?).

It's the obvious things like music, classic video games, movies, TV shows, etc. It's revisiting my baseball card collection and touching cards that I haven't handled in 30+ years. It's watching a King of Queens rerun & realizing that the episode is now 20+ years old. It's watching a freaking episode of The Office & realizing that episode is 15 years old! And while realizing the ages of those shows, thinking back to what I was doing when they originally aired.

Having all of those things trigger some sense of nostalgia for me is wonderful. I love being able to watch The Empire Strikes Back whenever I want. I love being able to play Yars Revenge.

I find myself enjoying all of those things in an attempt to recapture the glorious feelings that I had when I experienced them for the first time. I can't describe it exactly, but it's the feeling I had on a random Saturday afternoon as a child, coming home from a visit to our local department store, sitting on the shag carpet floor of the living room, having the fuzzy TV tuned to a random NBA/NFL/MLB game, rain falling outside & opening my newly acquired Matchbox car or Star Wars figure or 2600 game or board game or coloring book or any number of awesome things that I was fortunate to have as the fabric of my childhood. Occasionally I'll get that feeling for a few seconds but it's never long enough. I feel lucky that I have those wonderful memories and I hope that I never lose them.

So to answer your question, everything. 😀

Edited September 11, 2020 by StormSurge

[Atari 5200 Guy]

Nostalgic?  My 5200 for one.  I still remember the day I woke up to one.  Brings back good memories. 

Vinyl records come second.  My very first album was the Heavy Metal OST, double-album, gatefold jacket, beautiful artwork.  My second album was Styx Paradise Theatre where Side 2 had no label but a really cool etched logo that you could see only when light hit the grooves just right.  It was really something.  Then I got a Boston picture disc.  I couldn't figure out why I was given three records when I had no record player of my own.  The boyfriend Mom had then had got a decent setup with a fancy dancy turntable I was not allowed to touch.  So he gifted me his old Panasonic, all-in-one stereo.  I loved that thing and it could rock!  It had an 8-track player and AM/FM but I used records.

When I'm really feeling nostalgic I'll put on a vinyl record with 80's rock music on it and play an Atari for a while.  There are times when those old K-Tel albums make sense.

[Keatah]

Many many things as long as its something I hadn't seen in a good number or years. Literally anything. Sometime I may expand upon that.

 

[HDN]

Huh. I thought I had posted in this thread already. Weird.

Anyways, the smell of chlorine makes me very nostalgic. Every year my family and I stay in Door County at this place called The Rushes. The main building has a pool, and the entire thing is filled with that chlorine smell. That smell of chlorine and those carpets, the hum of the pool filters and the lights, the frigid cold locker rooms and arcade (back when they still had one), and I believe his name was John, who has worked at the front desk for as long as I can remember and is almost as cold as the locker rooms.

Good memories. Love that place to death.

[cbethea]

I'd have to say playing GameBoy Camera. So many memories playing the mini games and finding the intricacies of that peripheral. From hearing the "candid camera" song commercial ("Smile..you're on GameBoy Camera") to playing in my grandmas house when I was seven years old.

[DegasElite]

Two things make me nostalgic together. Atari 2600 games and music from the 1980s together make me feel like a kid again. It brings back memories by playing Atari games and listening to 1980s pop music at the same time. Thanks for letting me share. :O)