Baby with a Credit Card

The only issues that my roommate and I get really heated about are motorcycles and computers.  Neither of us is particularly computer-oriented (though we do check our Facebooks and use word processing quite frequently) and neither of us ever rides a motorcycle.  I am Mac and she is PC.  She is Harley and I am… anything but Harley.  Regardless, we are fanatically passionate about these products.  She argues that it’s crazy to spend $1000 on a computer when she only needed to spend $600.  I argue that my computer is twice as fast and will last twice as long.  Truthfully, though, I didn’t pick my Mac because of its processing speed.  That was a factor, of course.  But there was something deeper, more instinctual about my decision.  Macs are nostalgic for me.  I remember playing KidPix and Dark Castle on our old Mac, where you had to choose the “365 color” button on games to make them run better.  That is, if they had color.  I used iMovie on my dad’s Mac to edit my first movies.  I watched my sister head off to college with a blue and white MacBook.  I get that comfortable and homey, “fresh from the oven” feeling when I use my laptop that I just don’t get from the PCs at the library.    

            One could argue, of course, that I am simply more comfortable using the applications on a Mac, but what about the Harley debate?  The only time I rode a motorcycle, it was a Honda 50 on the trails behind my house.  The activity ended with me haphazardly driving across a small stream, up onto the banking again and stopping about 3 inches from an ash tree on the other side.  That was the beginning and end of my motorcycle career.  So why the hell do I care that Allyson used to clunk around her high school in a pair of black leather Harley Davidson boots?  The origin of my product preference is again from my childhood.  My dad and brother and uncles all ride motorcycles and I grew up a victim of endless dinnertime conversations about Gas Gas and KTM and Kawasaki and KDX.  Even though I didn’t ride them or know a single thing about them, they became the motorcycles of my childhood.  Likewise, Allyson had an uncle in Mosinee, Wisconsin with a Harley shop and she has fond memories of visiting her family there, and doubtless listening to Harley stories just like I heard Honda stories. 

            These debates got me thinking about other products from my childhood.  I started to wonder, “do I really love the products I love?  Or do I love that the people I love love them?  And is that reason enough to be loyal to a brand?”  My fondest retail memories from childhood were Barbie; Cinnamon Toast Crunch; Klutz books; Dunkin Donuts; and Chanel No. 5, which my grandmother was famous for wearing.  I remember flipping through Tiffany’s catalogues and picking out my engagement rings with my aunts when I was 7, and now, the Tiffany ring given to me by my mom when I turned 16 is one of my most treasured belongings.  My new self-awareness about the products I subconsciously love made me realize how dangerously routine I can be with brand loyalty.  I was surprised at how deeply shocked I was when I discovered that my college roommates used margarine, not Land O’Lakes butter.  Margarine just seemed wrong.  It made me uncomfortable to realize that I was so affected by the margarine that it felt like an ethical issue turning over in my stomach, not an issue of what to spread on my bread.             

            Even while I write, I still can’t help myself from smiling as I think back to Nerf guns and Double Bubble and dinner at the Olive Garden.  Of course, it was what I brought to these products, not the items themselves that make me so nostalgic.  If the job of a brand is to make you happy, then clearly all of the above have succeeded.  The issue is not that I still consider myself a PBS kid and an American Girl, it’s that the commercial decisions I made in the 3^rd grade are still affecting the products I value the most today. 

            When I asked Allyson to describe those old Harley boots to me, she couldn’t stop talking about how chunky and horrible they were, but when she finished her description she paused and said, “man, I love those boots.”