“Do you remember when Doritos only came in one flavor?”

“Or how about when cheeseburgers were seventy-nine cents?” I answered.

“You remember we only had two choices when it came to lunchmeat. Ham. Or Chicken. You didn’t have options. Kids these days. They don’t know what that was like. It was a simpler time.”

That’s how it started. Standing in the break room, my coffee in hand, my coworker Cedrick kept throwing all these other food items at me, answering the question before he asked me.

“But one flavor of Doritos, dude, remember that?”

“Yeah, totally! Of course, I remember that. Nacho cheese. Man. One flavor. That was it. Just one! One and only one.”

“Then Cool Ranch showed up,” Cedrick raised his eyebrows.  

“I was in high school, sophomore year, 1986. Two flavors. That felt like a lot.”

Cedrick laughed. So did I. And then we just stood there for a minute, because neither of us had to explain what we meant. In that very moment, we were the old guys in the balcony, watching Kermit and friends perform the Muppet Show, heckling gently at a world that kept adding options we didn’t ask for. Statler and Waldorf. We were the old guys.

Wait.

What?

We were the old ones, older than the characters on our favorite TV shows, like Different Strokes, Family Ties, The Cosby Show, Cheers, and Gilligan’s Island. The thing is, we weren’t calling out the younger generations for being soft, although, to be fair, we believe we have justifiable reasons to do so. It was more about consumerism getting the better of us. We had three size options at fast-food places. Small. Medium. Large. That was for drinks. And fast food? It wasn’t the end of our conversation. Only the beginning.

Today, the chip aisle is Salty. Spicy. Super spicy. Extreme heat. Vinegar. Dill pickle. Add 75 variations and options, so many choices that you can literally stand there longer than you should, trying to remember what kind you came in for. We had between twenty and forty different chips to choose from. Today? There are more than 300 varieties, flavors, shapes, and sizes. One chip started it all, and hundreds more are waiting today. All on that chip aisle.

“You remember that show Airwolf?” I asked. He nodded. “The main character, Stringfellow Hawk? He was on another TV show in the 1970s called Danger Island, which was in another show, the Banana Splits Variety Show.”

He looked at me, nodding his head. I wasn’t sure if he remembered. But Danger Island? It was a show inside a show. Like those matryoshka Russian nesting dolls; open one, and there’s another one inside, waiting, smaller, same face.

“You should go check it out.” He nodded, so I think maybe he will.

The break room holds our conversation. This conversation? Holds onto our memories. The memories hold one beneath another. And so on. Just like the dolls do.

Shortly after our conversation, I saw a still shot, a black and white photograph, of the original cast of The Electric Company. Morgan Freeman was among the young actors, as were Rita Moreno and Bill Cosby. Freeman went on to have a powerful career, Cosby got a little bigger, and Moreno was already well known. That? It’s a different kind of matryoshka. The smallest one on the inside turns out to be the biggest name you know. You just had to wait for the others to come off.

GenXers were born and raised under different layers. We lived differently from our parental units. Our Baby Boomer parents treated us like adults when we were kids. I wonder sometimes if we were robbed of our childhood. Maybe that’s why the Muppet Show balcony now feels like home. It’s the seat we’ve been sitting in the whole time, watching the dolls come apart one by one, layer by layer.

So I’m going to sit here, eating my nacho cheese Doritos, and spend my time watching younger generations make fools of themselves, the exact same way GenXers did. And we’ll laugh at them, the same way the Boomers laughed at us. Then, one day, they’ll turn to someone in a break room and say, “Do you remember when?” And a smaller version of this moment will be waiting inside that one, same face, still watching from the balcony.

What is it you remember?

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For Not Until They Are 25: A few months back, I overheard a kid in Target say something about his own generation that stopped me cold — read that one here.

For What An 80s Movie Teaches Me About Gratefulness: Speaking of 80s television, there’s a scene in The Princess Bride that taught me something about gratitude I didn’t expect — read that one here.