A feeling of nostalgia.

It’s one thing to live through the ‘70’s and quite another to have it thrown back at you – remixed.

You see, whenever I go around shops, the music I hear is generally the music I heard twenty or thirty years ago, except that the shoulder pads are gone. And when I hear music from the ‘70s, I am immediately inundated with visions of flared pants, the jumpsuits, bang-bang, dyed t-shirts, flat form shoes and teased hair that’s at least a foot tall.

I look at kids nowadays carrying CDs or simply storing away digital music and wonder how we managed then to lug around our favorite round vinyl album that came in square covers. Where today, people slip in an MP3 player in their pockets and listen to music while walking, we use to carry boom boxes on our now-scoliotic shoulder.

But then there are moments when I am positive I am in another decade, and a decade that I sometimes need a map to get around in. Why does it seem complicated to be an adolescent in this day and age? Or is it easier?
I was waiting in line in a cashier counter the other night and saw these girls beside me wearing a P1,000 flipflops, carrying fancy phones, and I couldn’t help hearing their conversations.
“ Are you going to Bora?”
“ No eh, we already went to Bora last summer.”
“ I want to go to Siargao!”
“ Yeah! Oh my God! Let’s go!”
“ But we don’t know how to surf!”

I felt sorry for the parents. It’s a near impossibility that these kids actually earned any money they were so extravagantly spending. Such conversations would be hard to find among people actually earning their own money. Well I bet, ten years from now, this is how those kids will sound:
“ Are you going to Bora?”
“ Are you nuts? Do you know how much the hotels costs?”

Maybe I get disappointed with kids of today because they don’t seem to have any social consciousness at all. Ok, I know I am making unfair generalizations. Many kids actually are aware of the world beyond their headphones, but that life now has become almost ridiculously complicated.

Thirty years ago I stood in line with three twenty five centavo coin to use a phone where you drop the coin, stick your finger in the hole corresponding to the appropriate number and dial. Today I saw one such phone used as a mall store décor and it looked like a museum piece.

Yes there are so many things I missed from my past. But at least when I get to thinking that I miss the music, all I have to do is turn on the radio and its all still there.