Nostalgia Googling

Every now and then I get these moments where I suddenly see something that takes me back, way back. Moments where old memories come rushing in and where I’m flooded with nostalgia.

Not saying that I’m THAT old, looking back on a life well-lived, but I just apparently have one of those brains that makes obscure connections on unconnected things and then connects them to connecting back with my youth. I’m weird like that.

Yesterday it was someone clinging to Captain America like a little koala bear (the binge continues!) or capuchin monkey while in the air. Tooootal mindleap but I was instantly brought back to birthday parties at my aunts house when I was little.

We Dutch have this concept called ‘kringfeestjes’ which is pretty much the gruesome exercise where they turn a joyous occasion into an entire afternoon of obligatory sitting in a circle of chairs with the complete extended family while enjoying cake and coffee and meaningless pleasantries.

There’s no music. No booze. No fried goods or piñatas. No dancing, no bouncy castles. Just sitting. Talking at a normal volume. With people you’d just seen last week for a similar party and thus endup repeating the same topics.

Luckily – we kids were usually allowed outside where we’d take to the streets en masse and still had fun enough afternoons with the cousins. But not at this aunts house. She lived in a tiny apartment in the middle of a bustling city (for Dutch standards) and busy road with too much cars for us to go outside. So we were housebound while there.

Sometimes we’d get to watch a Disney movie on the vcr (ok, maybe I am getting old) but most times we’d battle over my aunts collection of animal pole magnetty things. I dunno how to describe ’em differently. But they were pluche soft animalshaped magnets whose arms and legs would lock when touching. So you could attach them to curtains. Or clip ’em around your finger. Or straws. Or the tablecloth. And so on and so forth.

They. Were. Awesome.

Which is why I decided I need some in my life. I mean. I have my own curtains now. And still have a taste for cliche, goofy, unnecessary house-additions that make me look like a child in a grownup body.

Sadly…when you Google animal pole magnets…you get a looooot of interesting suggestions…but not the right one. Not my aunts oldschool afternoon-and-life-saving magnets. Which would make sense, I suppose. I can’t actually believe they’d still make those things with their complete uselessness as actual magnets.

But still.

You better believe I’ma keep nostalgia Googling. Still looking for the cherry shaped weights to hold down tablecloths that my grandma used to have as well. Just for the hell of it.