Sorry, I don’t feel …

Sorry, I don’t feel like digging up or posting any links today. I will however, tell you a story:

Remembering Childhood. The other night, I was watching TV and I saw a commercial advertising the Toys ‘R Us Spring Toy Catalog, and I suddenly remembered the excitement we all felt as kids when the Sears and JC Penney catalogs came in the mail. In my family, it was customary to take a pen and circle every toy you wanted with your initials next to it. Some toys ended up with five sets of initials next to it (five kids in my family). I started thinking about this and realized that those catalogs were really the only connection we had to American pop culture of the time. As you may recall, my family spent most of my formative years living overseas. The toy sections of these catalogs were the connection. We didn’t have American TV, and therefore no inundation of toy commercials on Saturday morning. Our classmates, the lucky ones who had recently moved from the States, had some clue as to what was popular, what was hip, and what was cool. Now that I am grown adult I look back on this time with a different perspective and I see today’s youth being influenced by media and culture in ways that I was never in tune to. Part of me is glad that my parents had the foresight to raise us kids in places that would give us a lifelong different perspective on the world around us, but part of me wishes that I was rasied just everyone else. But then, how boring and dull would that be?

Posted by Cameron Barrett at April 10, 2001 07:15 PM

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