The magic lasted four sips of Nesquik and a pack of Dinosaurus. My friend Juanma had carefully designed a trip to the past to recreate one of the summer breakfasts of his childhood: watching Xena, Warrior Princess while devouring a glass of milk with his favorite cookies. The preparations took him several days, but the long-awaited delight did not last more than a quarter of an hour. The weapons with plastic reflections, the outdated special effects, or “the very simple plot” of the episode quickly deflated the expected “paradise of fun” he had dreamed of. And when that happened, Juanma returned to the present, with frost in his hair and a folder with work reports waiting on his desk.
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When I heard this story, something inside me crumpled. I imagine it was the naivety of thinking that memories never get distorted. Juanma told me the anecdote after enduring one of my usual endless audios in which I confessed that I suffered from “nostalgia” for the things we did as kids, like painting Warhammer figures or getting hooked on some cartoon series. And he responded with the Xena story: “I haven’t felt like watching the whole series, nor do I think I’ll watch it again or buy another pack of those cookies.”
But what seemed like a downer to me was funny to him. In fact, he wrote me a phrase as if he were a replicant from Blade Runner: “I want to be a visitor and relive sensations. I don’t feel like I become a child when I watch it, because sometimes they touch on themes that I can now appreciate from a new adult perspective that I didn’t understand before.” And he threw down the gauntlet for me to do the same, to watch again one of the summer series from my childhood. I haven’t done it yet. I keep wondering if I’m willing to shatter one of the best memories of my childhood: Dragon Ball Z.
I’m not an expert on Goku, the protagonist of the story, but he is one of those ’90s characters who sneaked into the movie of my life. He was also there in the summer breakfasts I prepared at 12 years old for my brother Jonás and me. I remember serving the bowls of milk with Choco Krispies with the same flair as a Wild West bartender, and my little hand, at six, would gobble them up like Clint Eastwood. Meanwhile, we were amazed by the endless fights of the super saiyans. We didn’t know it, but behind it was also the message of perseverance, friendship, and not giving up in the face of adversity.
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After 12:00, after dropping my brother off at my mother’s craft shop, I would go with my friends to the public pool in Casar de Cáceres. For the kids back then, that place was a mega stage where we acted out the Dragon Ball episodes that aired daily. The water was the perfect space to launch Energy Waves or dive into the deep end and pretend we were suspended in the air. Somehow, it was as if we were part of the cast.
I’m terrified to imagine how I might end up if I follow my friend Juanma’s example and recreate all that. I don’t know if I could survive a morning without coffee or my brother without his post-breakfast cigarette. On the other hand, the photo of the group of friends in speedo-type swimsuits from the flea market fighting in the water would be legendary. But that’s not what excites me the most, but the possibility that traveling to the past in that way could change my perception of the present. Discovering something I don’t want to find, even though I suspect it’s there. Like when the TV remote slips between the sofa cushions and, when you lift everything, you find a lost coin or an unrecognizable food crumb wrapped in lint.
For a few years now, most millennials have been nostalgic, a little bit pretentious. Or maybe the problem is mine. Maybe it’s not Dragon Ball or Xena that have aged badly, but me, who can’t stand that trace of orphanhood left by the passage of time, the exile without return imposed by adulthood. As R. M. Rilke lamented: “The true homeland is childhood.” And in mine were Goku, the Choco Krispies with my brother, and the days when going to the pool was a cosmic journey.
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