Keeping the memories alive through organically created family tales is natural to human existence. It's how we got our fables, folklore, and mythology. It's how we got religion. Nostalgia, and telling the stories of the past, are ways that we stay connected to those around us without using the internet (he writes exclusively on the internet), because they tend to revolve around events where you see other people and actually talk to them.
Lets not be mistaken here, nostalgia and memories are very different animals. Nostalgia is sitting around eating clams on the half shell with family members because that was one of grandma's favorite things. Of course any meal was one of grandma's favorite things. The nostalgia comes in because we had gotten together for this specific reason, as tribute to the past generation, where we could incorporate the fun stories about clams.
When I was a teenager, I noticed a bottle of Clamato in my grandparent's refrigerator. For those who don't know Clamato is an unholy alliance of tomato juice and clam juice. Because, really, if you are making a Bloody Mary, nothing will freshen up the silky and delicate tomato juice taste like a fresh blast of sea water. And that is really the only use for Clamato. I have never seen a person, in real life, in front of me, drink a Bloody Mary, so I'm not certain they aren't just some meme, however my grandmother would insist that she kept that bottle of Clamato in the house just for that reason.
My theory is that she would buy some, pour out half of it to make it look like it had been used, then just stash it in the fridge until it mercifully expired and then dumped the rest of it. Nobody has proven me wrong yet.
Not really knowing what it was, this Clamato, and being a presumptuous asshat teenager, I decided to try some. Now, I had already experimented with Manhattan Clam Chowder, which is the worst food the East Coast has ever produced. Passing off whale menstruation as soup is a mean thing to do to a population, yet somehow, it has survived. Having a very unnostalgiac memory of the torture that is Manhattan Clam Chowder, I don't know why I didn't assume that Clamato would be any different. In fact, I probably blocked out the soup before I drank the small amount of drink.
Here's the thing about terrible beverages. They linger. They hang around for hours after consumption, and they let you know with a furious rage that they aren't gone yet. Clamato is no different. For hours after I had maybe a shot of it, the red devil liquid coated my mouth. Just...stayed there. I brushed, flushed, swished, drank, did everything else I could think of to mask the new torture that I would be tasting for the rest of my life. Eventually I either got the Clamato version of Stockholm Syndrome and just got used to my new reality, or the taste dissipated enough where it could no longer be detected.
Then I burped. Sweet Jesus.
Here's the thing about terrible beverages. The burps are worse. The Clamato mixed with whatever bile and acid and food gunk was in my stomach at the time. I can't really describe the flavor, but I remember it distinctly. Wet garbage on a hot day. The inside of an active shark. The toilet on the Deadliest Catch boat. All of the above. Burped into my mouth by me, the dipshit who thought drinking Clamato was a good idea.
Eating clams doesn't always conjure memories of shitty ideas for a drink. Most of the times the memories are more nostalgic in nature. I worked at a raw bar for a while and shucked the hell out of some clams. It wasn't a great job, but I got to work on my shucking skills, skills that have come into use since leaving that position. Helping with shucking is always fun, when done for fun. It's communal, conversational. It's something you do with other people that you immediately connect to.
That's where nostalgia comes from. It's sitting in the sun, laughing and drinking a beer, casually murdering bivalves. It was a good time, one I'll remember for a while. Nostalgically.
-SD
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