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Community Corner

Current and former residents flock to discuss "old school Arcadia"

More than 5,000 posts in a week on Tina Sweet's Facebook Group topic.

Nostalgia has a way of bringing strangers and friends alike together.

Just a week after Resident Tina Sweet posted a Facebook group topic, “You Know You're From Old-School Arcadia if You Remember...,” the thread became inundated with more than 5,000 posts.

At first, it was all in good fun.

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People talked about favorite hangouts of bygone eras and even favorite or not-so-favorite school teachers. A mention of a particular restaurant, bar or moment in Arcadia history would prompt a dozen people to weigh in.

But it didn’t take long before the less attractive side of human nature came out in comments later decried by group moderator Sweet as offensive, obscene and even racist with regards to statements about Arcadia's changing demographics.

Eventually, the comment thread regressed to wallowing in the past.

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It seems many of us want everything to stay exactly the same as it was in our youth.

I’m not sure what it is that makes us so fond of reflection. Even though we complained about life and parents and school in our pre-teen and teen years, as adults we often look back on those times as our glory days.

Is it that we see those days through rose-colored glasses? Or that, like the Barbra Streisand song says, “What’s too painful to remember we simply choose to forget; so it’s the laughter we will remember whenever we remember the way we were?”

Some of us have few unpleasant memories from our youth. But when we reflect on our youth as superior to the life we lead now, what does that say about us?

For others, reflecting on their youth is simply a momentary recollection of happy times from a different chapter of life, golden memories to be cherished.

Let’s hope that’s the perspective that future generations have on today’s Arcadia as it eventually becomes their “old-school Arcadia.”

Read more by Scott Hettrick at ArcadiasBest.com

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