We are rewatching The Office right now, and for the first time ever I noticed Dwight’s Froggy101 sticker. Back home, Froggy was one of the go-to stations, and *everyone* had that exact sticker plastered everywhere—on their beat-up car, in their garage, on their filing cabinet, on their notebook—and seeing it brought back such a huge wave of nostalgia for a radio station that I didn’t even really *like*, just because it made me so strongly remember my childhood.
I pulled up an advertisement for Froggy101 on YouTube to show my husband what I was talking about, and I literally teared up.
28 is such a weird age. I didn’t like it up home. I never miss it, and I never want to go back. But I do often miss being 18, 15, 9, and all the stuff that goes with being a kid; my childhood bedroom in my parents’ house that doesn’t even have the same layout anymore; my high school friends who are now scattered across the map; spending time at my grandparents’ house, which has since been cleaned out and sold.
There’s nothing to tether me to my roots anymore, except for these unexpected, almost painful shots of nostalgia that seem to come from the most unexpected places.
I don’t want to go back home, but I love collecting these morbid little fragments that remind me of who I used to be, squirreling them away in my own weird mausoleum of memories.
