My Kids Are Ruining My Nostalgia.

Recently my eldest daughter, Sloan, idly mused that she might like to watch a superhero cartoon.  Having grown up in the glory days of cartoon violence myself, my eyes lit up like runway beacons and I told her I had just what she was looking for.  We kicked up a streaming service and I, with the care and reverence of a sommelier decanting a 1961 Bordeaux, loaded up “Batman: The Animated Series.”

I selected an episode purely at random and settled in to enjoy a timeless classic of kids’ action TV.  She liked the noir opening, but after about 10 minutes came the dreaded phrase:

“This is kind of boring.”

…and all you middle-aged guys might want to get a fainting couch ready, because I agreed with her.

Put the pitchforks down, fellas.  On some level I suspect you know that it’s true.  “Batman” holds up better than most, but like everything else from the era, the shine is really starting to dull.

Thanks to the internet, anyone with a phone and a relaxed view on copyright law can revisit any television show, movie, song, book, or video game from any time basically since the dawn of recorded media, often for free. I brought up an episode of “Dinosaucers” on YouTube while I was writing this just to prove that I could, and as anyone who has tried to revisit their own childhood favorites online can attest, it sucked to a shocking degree.

Go back to anything you loved as a kid as a middle-aged adult and you’re in for disappointment.  Forget bargain-basement relics like “Dinosaucers,” even the popular stuff you loved was terrible.  When I was a kid, “Ninja Turtles” was the biggest childhood brand in the world.  Produce that show today and the rock bottom quality would be instantly meme-worthy.  When I told my friend in third grade that his drawing of Donatello looked “Just like the show!”, maybe that was saying a lot more about the animators than it was about my buddy, Brett.

^{Pictured: the flagship product of a billion dollar media property.}

The movies I loved were full of bad scripts and editing mistakes.  The great music of the time was buried under a flood of easy listening white noise.  I bought one of those sketchy little retro video game consoles recently, and it might as well have advertised itself as containing “Over 5,000 preloaded disappointments.”

So why am I ranting about old cartoons on my parenting column?  Because having children has been absolutely terrible for my nostalgia.

I want to share with Sloan all the things I loved at her age.  In my mind, it’s always a great bonding experience for the two of us and, bonus, a chance for me to dunk on the modern world with how great everything was in 1992…except that when I try anything like that, Sloan gets bored and it becomes ABUNDANTLY clear that 1992 was hot garbage. 

That’s a curated look at the early 90s, too; if the kid knew just how much line dancing we all did to “Achy Breaky Heart” that year, Sloan might never look at me with a glimmer of respect ever again.

Did my parents experience this?  I remember my mom trying to sell me on an episode of “Beany and Cecil” once that was airing at dawn on some static-y UHF station.  The look of confused disappointment that crossed her face when she sat to watch a few minutes of it with me makes a lot more sense now than it did when I was 8.  That was a show good enough to stay in syndication for 30 years, too; she didn’t even have the option of watching any of the bad stuff from her own childhood.

This whole experience of having my nostalgia shot down has been surprisingly humbling.  More than just being vastly mistaken about the merits of 80’s television, what else about being my daughter’s age have I forgotten?  What am I viewing with rose-colored glasses, and what awful experiences from childhood have the last 30 years made me forget?  How much of my kids’ lives am I misjudging because of selective memory?

I use phrases like “That’ll matter less to you as you get older” pretty often as a parent, but that only seems like a good response to me because I am older.  Today, for example, Sloan told me that she sometimes felt embarrassed because she’s one of the slowest runners in her class.  That’s a problem I empathize with.  I’ve got slightly uneven length legs, and I ran like a tortoise with a hamstring injury all through school as a result.  My response?   “Being able to run fast matters a lot less to you as you get older.”

What possible help is that to her?  Is she going to stop feeling stress on the promise that her current problems won’t matter several decades from now?  Maybe next week someone can tell me that I shouldn’t waste my money on Rogaine because having hair doesn’t matter as much when you’re 102.

Maybe it’s a stretch to say there’s something meaningful to be gleaned from terrible 80s cartoons, but realizing that my memories of my own childhood are so flawed is humbling.  At the very least, it’s a great reminder that when I try to compare my kids’ lives to my own childhood, I might not always know what I’m talking about.

…It’s also a great reminder to let the shows I loved as a kid remain unblemished in my memories instead of buying the boxed set.  Just leave it on the shelf, 40-year-olds; your kids will not enjoy “Thundercats,” and neither will you.

Feel free to buy me a cup of coffee at paypal.me/inessentialreading if you enjoyed the column.