Aging & Wisdom Quote by Doug Larson

Nostalgia, in Doug Larson's hands, isn't a warm blanket; it's software. Calling it "a file" turns memory into a tool you can open, edit, and quietly corrupt. The joke lands because it steals the romance out of reminiscing and replaces it with office-supply banality: nostalgia as a routine process, not a sacred feeling. That framing is the intent. Larson wants you to catch yourself mid-sigh about "the good old days" and notice the invisible labor your brain is doing to make them good.

"Removes the rough edges" is the sly giveaway. Rough edges are where the truth lives: the boredom, the fear, the petty humiliations, the bad weather, the bad politics, the bad teeth. Nostalgia doesn't invent a past from nothing; it sandpapers the past you actually had until it fits comfortably in your hand. The subtext is moral as much as psychological: when we polish yesterday, we also excuse it. We downplay what was intolerable for other people, what was unjust, what we simply survived rather than enjoyed.

Context matters: a cartoonist's line is built for quick recognition and a sting of self-implication. It's also quietly modern. The "file" metaphor anticipates how contemporary life trains us to curate reality - filters, highlight reels, algorithmic "memories" - so the past becomes a product optimized for pleasure. Larson isn't scolding sentiment; he's diagnosing it. The punchline is that nostalgia feels like affection, but it behaves like editing.