Like Tim McGraw, I miss ‘back when’ - but not all of it | Opinion

I love Tim McGraw’s song “Back When” because like the country singer, I miss back when. The pining grows more acute in summer, when I recall childhood joys like catching fireflies at dusk and playing kick-the-can.

As the ballad says, it seems such things “don’t happen much anymore.”

Clearly, then, not all change is progress. Not so long ago, such adventures in Americana were accessible even to a regular suburban kid like me. Some developments over the last four decades, though, have been unquestionably for the better. Here are a few examples:

Golden Retrievers not named Brandy. I have nothing against the breed. Nor do I scorn the name which, whether saluting the digestif or the Looking Glass ballad, I can salute. I simply welcome the variety of monikers that now grace this canine. In my youth, if you yelled “Brandy” from your back porch, at least three Goldens came running.

In group photos, kids no longer form pyramids. In the 1980s, if a gaggle of friends assembled for a picture they instinctively formed a pyramid. There’s nothing wrong with this, but there’s nothing exactly right about it, either. As a bigger guy always relegated to the bottom row, it never seemed worth the grass stains on my Adidas tracksuit.

“He got his bell rung” is an unacceptable injury report. Such was the cranial diagnosis in adolescence of my younger brother, Jack, and me by various coaches and others who put the loco in acting “in loco parentis.” They arose out of football hits, soccer collisions and nunchuck lumps (see below). My parents sought no second opinions.

Few preadolescent males wield nunchucks; fewer still fling throwing stars. My generation just missed the Bruce Lee movie era: This must be why nunchucks were everywhere. To this day I keep from cutting my hair too short: no sense advertising the cartoonish lumps I fear are still there.

The same goes for throwing stars, which today are hard to find outside the ninja community but lay about the countertops of my childhood like cigarettes, loose change and car keys. It’s amazing to recall what a nonevent it was to see these missiles of mayhem whiz inches above your head at a sleepover, and lodge in the fake wood paneling of a basement wall.

RIP, high dive. Normally I’m squarely in the pro-adventure camp, but even Superman had his kryptonite and this was mine. I ascended the lofty ladder rather than risk ridicule from pluckier pals, but did so with the halting gait of a man climbing the gallows. The community pool high dive is no more. No complaints here.

High school parties depicted in John Hughes movies like “Weird Science” and “Sixteen Candles.” Every Saturday evening when I drive home through my Charlotte neighborhood, see no cars lining both sides of my street, and know area teenagers aren’t treating anybody’s home like an Old West saloon amidst an epic brawl, I say a silent prayer of gratitude on behalf of out-of-town parents everywhere.

I’m not one to mess with perfection, and Mr. McGraw’s songwriters approach it with their lyrics. Maybe as a compromise, when I sing along, I’ll go with I mostly miss back when.