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Aaron reflects on the fine line between nostalgia and delusion, questioning whether his love for the past is keeping him grounded or pulling him into a time warp. Through a mix of humor and introspection, he explores how memories shape us—without letting them define us.
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Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Calafato
Art: Pete Whitehead
Original Theme Music: thomas j. duke
TRANSCRIPT
Aaron Calafato:
I love nostalgia. You all know that, but where is the line between loving nostalgia and becoming delusional? It’s not that far of a jump. Let’s walk through this together right after the music.
This all started back in 2019. This just shows you how much ruminates in this brain of mine. I read an article—I think it was in The New York Times—titled Your Past Is Not Your Future. There was more to the title, but the article was about time management and not having regret about bad time management in the past.
But the title said something to me: Your past is not your future. Now, as someone who tells these little seven-minute story tales every week, they’re autobiographical, but I’m pulling from past memories—which means I’m often living in the past.
And then recently, my kids—all of them, in their infinite preteen and teenage wisdom—have said from time to time, moment to moment, that I may have sounded out of touch. I don’t know what they’re talking about, but I’m here to consider it.
And it actually, secretly, got me thinking. To them, I’m like, I’m not out of touch. You’re out of touch. I’m not out of order. You’re out of order. But then, quietly, I started wondering: Am I? And more than that, where is the line? You can love the ways of the past so much that it’s not that far of a jump before you start becoming delusional and weird.
Any one of us is susceptible to that. Let’s just put ourselves in an imaginary scenario. You ready for this? You and I are one and the same, and we’re in an alternate universe—a universe where we’re still regular people. We do whatever we do nine to five. We’ve got dreams, all that’s there. But there’s just something missing that we can’t quite grasp. And so we manifest this…
We walk down the stairs into our basement. At first, it looks like a regular basement, but then there’s our section—the man or woman cave, whatever it is. A do not enter space. This is where we live. Our workshop. Our Zen.
But when we open the door to that space, we’ve created an accurate representation of our high school hallway and locker. It’s like a scene from a movie. Everything’s retro—the lockers, sourced from Goodwill, are the exact specifications of the ones we had in high school. The soundtrack is playing—probably 311, maybe some Green Day. You start pumping in the ambient sounds of a high school so it feels like you’re there.
There aren’t any other people there. That doesn’t stop you from thrifting mannequins and dressing them up. There they are, and you pretend they’re your old classmates. You recreate scenes.
Maybe you’re at your locker, reliving the moment you asked your high school crush to the prom. Or you’re talking to your best friend—who is now just a mannequin wearing American Eagle. You’re playing out scenarios. Oh, look, there’s that bully you should have stood up to years ago. Hey, there’s that dude who always looked like Kid Rock, and the guy always wearing Limp Bizkit t-shirts.
There’s your buddy. You better start planning the student newspaper article about your class song choice for prom. You know, the one you loved so much—The Freshmen by The Verve Pipe. You’re living in your own memory, replaying it over and over.
All of this might remind you of the classic Martin Scorsese film The King of Comedy starring Robert De Niro. If you haven’t seen it, it has echoes of The Joker—where the protagonist obsessively chases a late-night talk show host gig, except in Scorsese’s film, the character runs his own show in his basement with a fake laugh track.
We’re not too far off from that if we go too deep into memory lane, where our lives become nothing but memories.
All right, let’s take a breath. That’s just a cautionary tale. That’s not us. You and me—we’re living in the present. It’s important to live in the present. To learn from the past, to love the past—but not to let it take over, right?
So I actually went and talked to my kids, just to check in.
I said, You know, guys, sometimes you say I’m out of touch or living in the past. Do you really think that?
No, Dad. No, you’re good. We’re just kidding.
You sure?
Yeah.
The reason I’m asking is that I always want you to know—I love you guys. I’m present here with you. I joke around, I try to connect with you, and I never want to lose touch. And the reason I love all the ‘90s stuff is that those times were important to me. They inform who I am today, and I use that as fuel to be here with you now—to give you a better present in hopes that you have a better future.
And they were like, Yeah, Dad. That’s inspirational. We love you, Dad.
I love you too, guys. I’m glad we got that sorted out.
That evening, they went to bed, and I went to work. I was feeling good. I walked down the stairs into the dark basement, into my storytelling studio—covered in green foam and pictures of all the things I love. I turned on the microphone…
…to tell you a story about making sure we don’t get caught up in the past.
Oh God. Help.
I’ll talk to you next week.
