Back in Time for Winter 90s

February 22, 2020

     "Back in Time for Winter, the 90s" is the last decade described by the CBC series my friend Tony recommended. The tv parents grew up in the 90s, decades after I grew up, so they remember teen activities from then to show their teen daughters now:  road hockey with a tennis ball, rather than the sponge pucks I used in the70s; hair scrunchies, a sort of curling using paper strips, it seems; riding inner tubes to slide down snowy hills, whereas I used toboggans, cardboard, and when my daughter was a 90s child, crazy carpets; hand-held electronic game gadgets; and low-fat foods such as omelets using egg whites from a carton, and veggie burgers from scratch.

     Raw garlic as a cholesterol and general health aid was a 90s fad, the narrator says, and each tv family member eats a clove, reminded me of old Dolly in the Edson nursing home eating a clove per day from before I met her in the 80s.  She danced a little jig as she explained this habit.  I ate raw garlic regularly for months a couple years ago, but now I eat a daily anti-cholesterol statin pill.

     Food is becoming more familiar as the tv family lives decades closer to now:  bagels were a 90s item and remain one for the family.  I saw my first bagel at Edmonton's Heritage Festival in the early-80s, and ate plenty of them in the Carleton University cafeteria in 1981-82.  I even made them once, in the late-80s, I think.  In 1990, I found famous bagels in Montreal's St. Viateur Bagel and Fairmont Bagel.  Every Saturday I'd walk or bike to one or the other place near the St. Urbain Street, 1920s-era first floor apartment Ira, Mikhael, and I shared in one of those famous Montreal buildings with the iron stairs up its front.  The smell of steam, yeast, and sesame seeds pervaded the bakery as the bakers took seas of bagels from the oven and slid them down the sloped steel table toward the front counter.  Bring them home in the paper bag while they're warm.  Put them on top of the fridge.  Put them in the plastic bag that came in the paper bag once they cooled.  Ira brought bagels when he and Mikhael visited us here in Williams Lake later in the nineties, and I got some when I visited them in 1999, the last year of the decade.

     The Y2K frenzy ends this episode.  That's already 20 years ago! 

      They seem to enjoy the 90s more than earlier decades, but still they whine about things they do from that era.  One hopeful item is the tv dad in the kitchen, once solo.  Families were busy and kids were latch-key, the narrator says, so instant food is common, homemade veggie burgers notwithstanding.  There's a frozen chocolate cake, such as the 60s Rolling Stones song "Mother's Little Helper" mentions.   Pushing 60, I disagree that it's a drag getting old, a lyric from the song, and no doubt a motive for the producers of this series, who might have made it to recapture their youthful experiences.  One can never go home again, whether or not one puts one's foot in the river twice:  different home, different river.  Remember the good times and notice more as they come.

     There's a last episode, in which the tv family members reflect on their experiences.