Why the fond memories of others leave me nauseous

I am not referring to any specific revival in the "K-Tel Solid Gold Hits of 1971" sense of the word, I just mean the general way we attach too much sentiment to our past. We remember things in a way that amplifies the emotion, good or bad - it isn't exactly the same as when it happened. Somewhere in the recesses of our brains, between electrical charges and chemical reactions, our memories of meaningful events are mutating into grandiose escapades.

Nostalgic thoughts are like the silly-putty of the mind in which the protagonists of these stories (often ourselves) get stretched in every direction, becoming giants among men. The funny thing is that we are suspicious of any story about the big one that got away, except when that story passes our own lips. We believe our own bull.

I suppose it is an innate human tendency to spice up a story and then to believe our own exaggerations of reality that we have created the venerable and the vilified icons of every age.

Paul Serilla Serilla Warfare

Jason and the Argonauts? Probably just a couple of Greeks who went sailing on their buddy's boat, gave a little too much praise to the god of fermented beverages, ate a few too many stuffed grape leaves, fell asleep and drifted out to sea. They finally made it back to work on Monday (four years later) and told everybody what a great time they had, throwing in a couple of sea monsters for good measure. Suddenly, it is a timeless tale of magnanimous proportions.

Every icon we believe in is probably like that. George Washington never actually cut down a cherry tree, but once ate an entire cherry pie over a long weekend. The famous "frozen tundra" NFC Championship Game at Lambeau Field was really played on a 60-degree day, but there was a hefty breeze and it looked pretty nippy on TV.

The reason I got thinking about blowing a little reminiscence out of proportion is that the college years, followed closely by the high school years, seem to be our culture's prime target for meaningless exaggeration.

I am not sure why we don't decipher the elaborate strings of stories that enter the trash compactor between our ears and come out in one solid clump. "Yeah, remember that one time freshman year when we beat Ohio State and Notre Dame in the same weekend, Tyrone Wheatley had 1,000 yards, and Bob had like, 65 beers, and we went to that party on Arbor with like, 2,000 people, and then like, 10 feet of snow fell in an hour, and the dead rose from the grave to terrorize the living?"

"Yeah - good weekend."

Maybe blowing things out of proportion, when it is no longer really significant is just a little naturally occurring dose of reassurance that kicks in every once in a while. As long as these minor delusions don't spiral out of control, are they that big of a problem?

For instance, the other day I was hanging out with a few friends and one of them pulled out a video tape of the last gig he played with this rock band in high school. They played bars and small clubs; they were pretty good but my friend rarely brings it up. In fact, he seemed more impressed with how young and skinny he looked than his guitar solos. It was harmless fun, remembering something that seems to have happened a long time ago.

Then another friend pointed out that our ex-guitar-slinging pal had accomplished a lot since then, moved on in a different direction and still had a lot to look forward to, while that band might have been atop a short list of lifetime achievements for the other musicians.

It made me think about reaching a lifetime peak at a very young age. Maybe some of us are nostalgic because we have very little else to hang on to. It seems likely - we all see the washed up ex-jocks and popular kids on our vacations home. They appear to be living off stored high school memories of when they were cool, confident and thought they could live forever. A lot of people out there are in high school hibernation, waiting to be woken by the dawn of a second prom that isn't coming.

I think the problem is that we, the college bound, have picked up a little hubris by finally overcoming the limitation of the ever-enigmatic high school popularity contest. Some live in the past, but the college student's plague is living in the future. Preparing so diligently for tomorrow that we fail to have real experiences now. If we don't stop to smell the proverbial roses, in 10 years, all we'll have is vapid exaggerations of what we wished we had done. So, as finals approach and the pressure cooker starts to boil, just remember that a few years down the road you won't remember what you got on that test.

Good luck on exams, but don't forget to have some fun.

- Paul Serilla can be reached over e-mail at pserilla@umich.edu

12-05-97