Have you ever heard of the AIDS epidemic? I mean that seriously - it affected tens of thousands of people and brought about a wave of gay panic that we're still fighting down today. But people don't talk about it anymore.

Or the Iran-Contra affair? Reagan committed a felony, turned over on Oliver North and then pardoned him.

What about the crack epidemic? Listen to Public Enemy some time, get a sense of how a lot of people lived in the 80s.

For some people, life in the 80s was great. Maybe your dad lived an especially charmed life, I don't know the guy. Maybe he didn't worry about the AIDS epidemic, civil war across eastern Africa, the Iran-Contra affair, the crack epidemic, or many of the other terrible things going on in the world. But if he didn't, doesn't that suggest to you that maybe he was disconnected from the world - much the way you're complaining young people are today?

Or it's possible he's trying to protect you because you're young and you don't need to know about that stuff. He tells you he had a great time growing up because he wants you to have a great time growing up. That's something dads do.

I'll recommend a couple of books that I read as a teenager - American Pastoral by Philip Roth and In the Beauty of the Lillies by John Updike. Both of these books deal with questions of nostalgia, and how we reckon with a past that seems much better in hindsight.