Where have all the memories gone?

Dan Barber

I often hear people exclaim, “Back in the good old days…” I want to ask, what was so good about them? Back in the day…I recall that I was extremely self-conscious; totally unsure of myself; awkward and really shy to the point where I found it difficult to even speak to anyone. I don’t think I had an issue with self-confidence because I remember being full of hope that my future was going to be adventurous and I was immortal.

I’m sure most of my high school classmates at John A. Rowland High School were suffering the same issues with self-image that I was, however, they seemed to be much braver then I. It seemed that they took the chance to have fun, to speak to others, to make friends, some of which turned out to be life-long friendships. The biggest regret that I have from my childhood is that I should have been less afraid to make a fool of myself and to have more fun.

I enjoy listening to people reminisce about the experiences they had in their lives, I even enjoyed writing about the adventures of people I interviewed over the years because it gave me the opportunity to experience those adventures with them even if it was just by proxy. Today when I attend social gatherings it is fun for me to watch others in their easy conversation with their old friends, but it also gives me that pang of regret that the friends I made in my life are pretty much just acquaintances because the only thing we had in common was our military service… and we might have only been stationed together for a short period of time…our community was not a place, but a state of mind, a group of people who were located in a strange place with different cultural norms then our own.

When I retired from the Navy I returned to my hometown of Rowland Heights, Calif., mostly because I thought that I missed the place. I quickly discovered that I didn’t miss the place at all, what I missed was my youth and the friends I had played ball with, went to school with or just hung out with. Rowland Heights had become a strange place filled with lots of people that I had nothing in common with. It seemed that the span of years and distance had made me a stranger in my own mind and in my own hometown. When I again moved away from there to, Twentynine Palms, Calif., where I had never visited in my life, I discovered that I had come home. Most of my new neighbors were in the military, or they were military veterans or military retirees that I had never met but felt that I had known my entire working life.

I guess the “Good old days” are in fact just good memories we are reluctant to give up.