Around 2 years ago, Blue Sky Studios, the team that created Ice Age, announced their shut down “due to financial constraints” (scroll.in). Just a week ago, the studio released a final animated short clip of Scrat the squirrel eating his acorn as a means of saying goodbye to the fans that stuck with them through the years. For context, Scrat had never been able to eat his acorn throughout the Ice Age films, which frustrated many viewers, so this final clip shook the hearts of many, including me. We saw him struggle to reach his goal and cause trouble along the way, which created much of the conflict in Ice Age. After seeing the clip, Emma Reiss (10) commented that “it was definitely worth the wait and reminded me of watching the movies as a kid.” As I look back at my childhood personally, it was surprising how much these movies had shaped who I was as a kid. This made me think about the power of nostalgia and how many emotions it can create within a person as they look back in time.

Nostalgia is a feeling of pleasure associated with longing to go back to a simpler time. This can mean going back a week, month, or even years to a moment that truly captured you. It’s crazy how we don’t truly appreciate certain moments until they have already passed, and all that is left are memories. Especially as children, we tend to want to grow up quicker and become free adults, away from our parents’ rules. Now, as I am slowly approaching the end of my teen years, I miss those times so much, as I felt freer than ever even though I had strict parents. I wasn’t free because I could do whatever I wanted, but free because I was so ignorant of the world that I could truly enjoy a happy moment without overthinking. I was kind of like Scrat the squirrel in a sense where we both only cared about the simple things in life like eating an acorn, rather than snow storms, falling boulders, and climate change.

As a kid, your mind is not yet fully developed yet, meaning you can’t retain extremely complicated information. When we look back at our childhood, we can all remember the true joy we felt. For example, going to Disneyland and riding the big rides for the first time, scoring your first goal in soccer, buying your favorite books from Scholastic Book Fairs, and getting tubs of candy from trick-or-treating with your best friend. Even though you can feel nostalgic towards any period of time, the type of nostalgia you get from thinking about your childhood specifically is unmatched, as your brain was so simple back then that even the little things excited you. Now, watching the clip of Scrat eating his acorn, I thought of what life was like when my biggest worry was which ice cream flavor I should get for my birthday, or which stuffed animal I should bring to my cousin’s house. Most importantly, though, I thought of rewatching Ice Age to relive those memories.

As we grow older, we tend to look back in time and feel intense sadness and happiness about the memories we lost. Nostalgia is a crazy feeling. It doesn’t bring people simple happiness that we feel in the moment, but rather a bittersweet mix of everything, almost like a roller coaster. Many YLHS students have probably felt this way before, as we are high schoolers preparing to become adults. While those days are long gone, it is still fun to look back and talk to our school friends about these memories as we will never get to live them again.