July 20th, 2021
It’s been brought to my attention by multiple people over the last few weeks that I have been talking about Full House a lot, and watching it with curious regularity.
I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t begin questioning why I’ve been doing this.
With the 90’s being the latest era to be co-opted as a trend by a later generation, I’ve again been reading and watching a lot of viewpoints on the power of nostalgia (which is an entire essay in itself).
There is one point in particular that has been highly resonating with me:
Nostalgia exists because of our imperfect memories.
And as soon as I reconciled that theory with my behavior did I figure out why Full House has been on my mind.
I grew up as part of the TGIF generation, and Full House was the crown jewel of that line-up in our household. I don’t know if our family missed an episode, and I have so many warm memories of those Friday nights.
One-liners, guest stars, musical numbers, marriages, pregnancies, deaths — the show opened doors to actual conversations and real feelings and it was a major part of my childhood.
And thinking about that made me realize I had, like almost everybody else, an imperfect childhood, but those nights spent with my mom and the rest of my family felt perfect. And keeping the artificial parts, the episodes of an old TV show, running through my head gives me very real feelings of peace and security and happiness.
It’s a coping mechanism, and one that has been helping me with grief since day one.
I guess what I’m trying to say is if someone around you is dealing with stuff and they’ve found themselves obsessed with the healing properties of their favorite piece of nostalgia, you should heed the words of Uncle Jesse when dealing with them: have mercy.
And if they ask you to sit down and enjoy an episode with them, it doesn’t take much to respond: you got it, dude.
The Den 