Ok technically this isn't specifically about corn dogs, but what corn dogs used to mean. When I was a kid one of my favorite things were corn dogs. I didn't get to have them that often so when I did it always felt special. Something about a hot dog encased in cornbread was sheer genius. Add a handy stick that protects the fingers and my little child brain almost couldn't handle it. Thinking back about the times when I had corn dogs, I don't even know how they tasted. I only know that I loved them.
Somewhere along the way corn dogs stopped being awesome to me. I can't pinpoint a specific instance when I stopped loving them, but it happened and part of me is sad that they're just another thing that I don't seem to appreciate like I used to. It's been a couple years since I had one and the last one I had tasted like disappointment. The cornbread was hard in spots and gooey in others. The hot dog...well it tasted as good as a hot dog can taste when surrounded by a funky bread-like substance. Is it possible that corn dogs tasted different when I was a kid? Did they change or did I? They say that you're essentially a new person every seven years. At least on a cellular level anyway. So do the things we loved when we were young stand a chance at being loved by us as we get older if we're almost a completely different person the next time we try them?
Sometimes I think nostalgia must be a form of delusion. Are the memories we have actually what happened? So much of what we experience is slanted towards our own perception of the event. Things that happened could be distorted due to emotions or simply misremembering details. I suppose that could call into question what is actually reality if reality is just the collective perception of events based on the memory of them. That's a whole other bag of frogs though.
Find something that you used to love as a kid. Or even less extreme, find something you used to love ten years ago and haven't experienced since. Is it as important to you now as it was then? Try watching an old movie or television show that you haven't seen in years. How long does that warm feeling of remembering last before you start to look at it with present day eyes?
I'm not saying it's impossible to love something from your past. I just wonder how certain things move through time with us. Obviously you won't love everything in the same way as when you were eight, but what causes some people to continue loving something long after others have outgrown it?
Something like Star Wars or Star Trek is a good example. Both have influenced people long after they originally came out. Still to this day there are people who love either as much now as when they first were released. What if you had watched Star Wars once or twice and loved it, then didn't see it again for 25 years. How would it hold up compared to your memory of it? They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. It can also make it grow forgetful. Maybe it's that gap in between that causes the idea of it to be better than reality.
For me there is almost a fear of reliving certain things from my past. I'm convinced that the memory of it is going to screw up my expectations of what it will be like today. Is it better to let some things just stay a pleasant memory?
