Wallowing in nostalgia can make you happier? See, I told you so.

As my dad grew older, one thing we noticed was that even though he often could not remember what he'd eaten for breakfast that morning or the dog's name, he could recall, with startling clarity, things that had happened during his childhood. In fact, as he lay in a hospice facility getting ready to leave us all, he frequently conversed -- and often laughed -- with his mother, who died in 1936.

I thought about that this morning as I perused the posts on Lost Des Moines (LDM), a Facebook group page that's one of my favorite haunts. (And before I go further, let me address this: Yes, I'm online a lot. But I justify this, when people ask how I find the time, by telling them quite truthfully that with the exception of the news and a few weird cable things, I don't watch much TV. So while my husband is indulging in seven straight episodes of "The Walking Dead," you can find me at the computer. That's not a value judgment; it's just the way we are.)

Anyway ...

My time on LDM has reinforced the fact that people -- myself included -- are comforted by nostalgia. That's not news, but the revelation for me, I guess, was that you don't have to be 850 years old to want to turn back the clock and spend some time in the Land of Long Ago.

It also struck me, as I became familiar with some of the LDM regulars, that they aren't housebound and bored; with very few exceptions, the folks who spend the greatest amount of time on LDM are busy people with full lives.

So I decided to do a little research on why we enjoy talking about department stores that are long-gone, how we felt about our kindergarten teacher or whether the ice-cream man came down our street. According to BBC News' Stephen Robb, it's pretty simple: We like to talk about the past because it makes us feel good.

In a report for the BBC in 2010, Robb cites a study from the University of Southampton that found remembering past times "improves mood, increases self-esteem, strengthens social bonds and imbues life with meaning."

"Most of our days are often filled with with routine activities that aren't particularly significant: shopping for groceries, commuting to work and so forth," the article also quotes psychologist Clay Routledge of North Dakota State University as saying.

"Nostalgia is a way for us to tap into the past experiences that we have that are quite meaningful -- to remind us that our lives are worthwhile, that we are people of value, that we have good relationships, that we are happy and that life has some sense of purpose or meaning."

The article also quotes experts as cautioning people against wallowing constantly in nostalgia. For most of the people I know, though, it's not that way; LDM is more of a nightcap, a place to spend 10 minutes talking about making out at Lost Planet or waiting in the parking lot for Valley West Mall to open on its very first day.

It's also, I think, a way for us to be reassured that we simply belong. My husband and I grew up in different states, so we have no shared frame of reference; it makes him feel comforted, then, to talk with folks back home about their common experiences, just as it makes me happy to talk with others who remember when Valley High School sat on a dirt road and 50th street in West Des Moines was "out in the country."

I do enjoy wallowing in nostalgia, I guess, from time to time. But I'm also very much present in the here-and-now, so I think there's probably a healthy balance there.

Now, if you'll excuse me, a conversation is starting on LDM about Heaven to Seven, an Urbandale store where I was fitted each year for my grade-school uniforms. If that rivets you as much as it does me, take a few minutes and stop on by.

Let's hear it for the boys

A few days ago, my friend Jeff posted a photo in which he and another of my almost-lifelong friends, Bill, are standing in front of an ice-cream shop. It's a typical photo, albeit a bit whimsical; we're all in our late 40s now, and going to the ice-cream store probably constitutes a little more fun than we have in our everyday lives.

The photo made me smile for any number of reasons; the years have treated both men well, and the faces that smiled back at me were the ones I remembered from our high-school days. But the way I felt was derived from more than that; these guys, and a few others, were a huge part of my history. And my friendships with them were considered a bit odd in an age where, as my dad often told me, "Nice girls don't call boys."

I don't think I'm the only woman who has ever been more comfortable having friendships with guys than with girls. During my formative years, from junior high through college, although I had female friends, my maximum comfort level was achieved when I hung out with boys. (And let's cut to the chase here -- I'm talking about platonic friendships. The guys who were my friends were not the ones I dated.)

Friendships didn't work out with all guys, mind you; I gravitated toward the ones who had more to them than met the eye. They weren't necessarily the jocks or the student-council representatives; they were nice guys who liked to write or read or listen to music or talk for hours. It was easy to open up to them about other, less worthy boys, or about school anxieties or family issues.

And the crux of it was just that: They listened, and they didn't seem to judge. We attended a Catholic school, and through eighth grade, we were grouped with the same 40 kids, give or take, year after year. We all knew each other, and we all had formed opinions, right or wrong, about our classmates.

In some ways, I was a square peg in a round hole. My hair wouldn't part in the middle and "feather back," and I read the dictionary for fun. I was also the only person in my class who didn't have a mom. Maybe some of my perceptions about others' opinions of me weren't correct, but at that point in my life, I didn't feel I fit in.

And my guy friends didn't care. They seemed to value the fact that I was smart and a good listener, and that I wasn't too shy to ask the kinds of questions that would lead them to talk about things they had wanted to talk about, but didn't know how. They didn't care that I had glasses and looked nothing like Marcia Brady, or that I was way too tall, having hit my full adult height of 5'4" when I was all of 11.

And there was more: If one of them liked a girl and was reluctant to let her know, I was the go-between, the eighth-grade romance broker. And I was also there to sympathize with them if that first crush just didn't work out.

High school and college were much the same, but on a different scale because I had boyfriends to factor into the equation. Everyone caught up to me in height and I lost the glasses; I was suddenly dateable, but that didn't put an end to my relationships with my guy friends. I still laugh at a yearbook inscription from the guy who was my boyfriend for two years in high school: "You spend more time with Marty and Steve than you do with me, and that's kind of weird. But I guess it's OK."

In retrospect, the fact that my guy friends valued me for the person I was had a great deal of bearing on the fact that I reached adulthood with my self-esteem intact. A boyfriend may have turned out to be not so great, but Bill or Jeff or Chris or Steve or Marty or Tom was there to remind me that my self-worth should be derived from so much more than the opinion of a boy who had dumped me because he fancied someone blonder or skinnier.

Don't get me wrong; I had some tried-and-true girlfriends during those years, too. Tricia and Susan and Francie and some others helped me understand that not everyone was a "Mean Girl," and my friendships with them, all of which still endure to some degree, led me to reach out to some of the women who are my best friends today.

Male/female friendships are more difficult in the adult world; I still have them, but they're different, as no one wants to be perceived as a boundary-crosser. I'm really happy, though, to see that each of my kids has close platonic friends of the opposite gender, and that my husband counts at least one woman among his closest allies at work.

As I look at the picture of Jeff and Bill and see photos of some of my other pals and their wives and families on Facebook, I wonder if those guys have any idea just how much they meant to a girl who was trying to find her way in the world. I doubt they realize that just by being themselves, they helped me let down my guard, let people in and begin to reach out.

My ability to be a good person in adulthood -- or to try to, anyway -- was shaped, at least in some degree, by their tutelage. And all these years later, as I smile at those still-young faces in the photo, it's high time to say "thanks."

On the edge of ... about 30 years past 17

No, I'm not related to Mark Zuckerberg. Or even Justin Timberlake. But I love Facebook, and here's one of the reasons.

I received a message last week from the sister of a person who had been a good friend of mine in high school. It seems this person had been made aware of some of my articles in our local newspaper, and his sister had written to say he had mentioned me.

I instantly flashed back to 1981; the Stevie Nicks album "Bella Donna" had just come out, and this person had given it to me. I ended up wearing out the grooves, literally, and having to buy another copy of the album after I started college.

When you're my age -- and I am now closer to 50 than 40 -- some centers of your brain become more hypersensitive than others, I firmly believe. And the music center has to be one of those:

I hear "So Happy Together" and flash back to dancing my first baby, who is now 22, around the living room. "Unforgettable" was playing in the hospital hallway when I was laboring with my second child, so Natalie Cole makes makes me think of meeting my daughter. I associate other songs with my husband, my friend Jane, my dad's illness ... the list is endless.

So when I heard from my friend's sister on Facebook, I found my Bella Donna album -- now a CD download from iTunes -- and I spent a while in 1981, remembering a young boy who had known me well enough to purchase what would end up being the soundtrack to my next few years. If not for Facebook, I don't know how his sister would have found me, and I wouldn't have been given a mini-vacation back in time.

The last time I checked, TV sure doesn't bring you "Edge of Seventeen" when you're on the edge of 30 years past that and in need of a warm memory. I'll keep the Facebook habit.