Today, we don’t experience moments—we package them for consumption.

Today I climb into Mr. Peabody’s time machine and set the dial to the summers of 1975 through 1979, when my family and a small army of friends made the annual pilgrimage to Pt. Reyes Beach. Johnson’s Oyster Farm was our temple, and its truck beds overflowed with what seemed like an infinite supply of oysters. From noon to sunset, we ate like gods in exile—barbecued oysters drowning in garlic butter and Tabasco, bottomless baskets of garlic bread, and colossal slabs of moist chocolate cake.

Ignoring the ominous great white shark warnings, we punctuated our feasting with reckless dives into the waves, emerging from the ocean with our pecs glistening in the sunlight, ready for another round of oysters. In the summer of ’78, I decided not to ride home with my parents. Instead, I hitched a ride in the back of a stranger’s truck, surrounded by a ragtag group of new acquaintances—full-bellied, sun-dazed, and staring up at the stars with our glazed lizard eyes, swapping wild stories like ancient mariners.

And here’s the thing: nobody took a single picture. There were no selfies, no curated posts to induce FOMO, no frantic attempts to manufacture nostalgia in real time. We were too deep inside the moment to think about how it might look on a screen later. Today, we don’t experience moments—we package them for consumption.