Urgent Medical Alert

By Chip Chipheardt

No one thought it could happen on this street in this modern, Midwestern commuter town in this day and age. An age of rapid advancement, e-mails, cutting edge fashion and technology. An age of advanced medical treatments delivered at your corner urgent care center. The age of now. The age of the sparkling future.

The elders will tell of the affliction. They will tell and be hastily ignored by most of the denizens of this haven for young families. But listen closely and you will hear at least one young couple talk of the disease hereto unknown by most of their peers: Early Onset Nostalgia.

"It's hard to describe," the afflicted young mother described. "I think it all started with the Olympics. Just the sound of the Olympics on the television in the living room in the background of life. That sound took me right back to one of my earliest childhood memories. Were there summer games in 1980? I could look it up on the world wide intraweb, but have suddenly forgotten how. All I can remember is the smell of my mom cooking in the kitchen and the Olympics on television. Oh, crap, my heart hurts so bad I might puke."

"For me, it was the green beans," explained the young, afflicted father. "My wife grew several pots of green beans on our deck for the first time this year. She came inside with a handful one night last week and I snapped one in half and ate it immediately. That taste transformed me into a small boy in my Grandad's backyard, the smell of his garden, his smile and bright eyes, the green beans he grew each summer. I gotta have more of those beans. . ."

Typical Nostalgia normally strikes the elderly at a time in their lives when they can better cope with the side effects. Behaviors such as being frozen in place by a memory for longer than fifteen minutes, attempting to build a time traveling device with household appliances, and reenacting a conversation which occurred thirty years ago while in line for dinner, all seem less debilitating when experienced in a nursing facility. The staff of most such facilities are specially trained to treat those afflicted with the disease with kindness and patience.

Early Onset Nostalgia is highly atypical. Side effects become problematic due to the responsibilities of career and busy young family life. Feelings of shame and guilt often accompany the disease.

"I feel so bad," sighed the wife. "I have this great life right now. I am trying to enjoy each moment. I don't really want to travel by coffee pot back to the 1970's. . .but to play with my old Star Wars figurines in my dad's van while driving to Ocean City, just one more time, just one more time. . ."

Once in the grasp of Early Onset Nostalgia, the young couple found themselves quite unable to move forward with their current reality. "My eyes kept tearing up, "the young father reminisced about his reminiscence. "I passed a VW Vanagon on the road this week and I had to pull over to the side of the road. I could almost smell my own teenage, stinky feet which tortured my family on our long road trips."

But a late afternoon playdate brought a glimmer of hope for treatment and recovery. With an extra child in the house, the young mother was forced to be a bit more creative than normal to keep the kids occupied. "They started to fight over a cabbage patch kid, my old Corn Silk Kid to be exact, and I remembered that a whole slew of my old cabbage patch kids were up in the attic. So the kids and I went on a rescue mission."

"My mommy went up through the hole in the ceiling," the 3.75-year old daughter continued. "Then dollies started flying through the air at us."

The kids immediately began playing with the ressurected dolls and watching them brought the mother a sense of peace she'd not experienced since the affliction began. "Oh, I felt better right way. I knew then what we needed to do."

This weekend found the young parents immersing themselves in treatment. A young father said, "We took the girls to a matinee viewing of Star Wars Clone Wars. The theater was filled with other families just like us - parents in their 30's with young children. Looking around, you couldn't tell who was enjoying the movie more. I don't feel nearly as alone anymore. And then the girls ran around the house this afternoon playing with their Star Wars toys from McDonalds. They made shooting noises ('Pee-chew, pee-chew, pee-chew') and pretended to be Jedi Knights. It was great!"

Part of the Treatment Plan?

Other 70's-style activities enjoyed by the girls and happily encouraged by the parents included building a home for play figurines out of cardboard cereal boxes and stenciling with colored pencils.

The mother further explained, "My mom came up on Friday afternoon and cleaned my childrens' rooms, just like she used to do for me. I fell to my knees when I got home from work and saw those clean rooms. I was just flushed full of memories and I couldn't move out of gratitude covering 34 years. But then Iris came up and started throwing toys around her room and jumping in her pile of stuffed animals, just like I used to do and I was able to unfreeze and continue with my motherly responsibilities. Of course tonight the girls asked to go to sleep on the big pile of stuffed animals, and I let them. I took a picture of them all tucked in safe and felt warm and homey myself."

Lay Us Down. . . On a Bed of Stuffed Animals

Sadly, there is no known cure for Early Onset Nostaglia and it appears to be contagious. Several recent studies of the condition were discontinued after the lead scientific researchers became re-obsessed with Atari games and Etch-a-Sketches.

When told of these scientific failures, the now experienced young couple provided sound advice, "Those scientists should have their own children, immediately. Reliving their childhood memories through the newest generation is their only hope."