Best Years of Your Life - Television Tropes & Idioms

It's a depressing thought.

When I look back now

That summer seemed to last forever

And if I had a choice

I'd always wanna be there

Those were the best days of my life

— Bryan Adams, Summer of 69

You're in high school again!

— Nirvana, "School"

You're miserable. You're unpopular. Your erstwhile Best Friend Forever just got a glance from Alpha Bitch and charged off to join the Girl Posse without a backwards glance. The Jerk Jock is harrassing you to prove that Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb. You have too much homework and you've put it off too late.

So your parents burble, "These are the best years of your life!"

Stock Phrase frequently deployed by nostalgic adults, who want to think that Growing Up Sucks but childhood was good. Generally indicates that Adults Are Useless, as few if any stories exist where the adults are actually right to say this. When an adult is reflecting on the best years of his life, the trope is Glory Days. (Overlap is likely.)

The Anime/Japanese culture equivalent is seishun (springtime of your youth). Generally played even more melodramatically (and parodied all the time).

And besides, whoever it was first said that school days are the best days of your life clearly never went to university or saw the show...

Examples

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Anime

Excel Saga's Baseball Episode features a heavy parody of this.
The opening of Kimagure Orange Road plays it straight, specifically using seishun

Comics

Calvin and Hobbes. Mostly invoked by Calvin's dad.
Calvin: People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children.
- In another strip, Calvin asks his dad what the "Halcyon days" of one's youth might be ("Is Saturday one?") and is told that these are awarded retroactively from the position of cynical middle age. Calvin leaves disgusted that apparently you never know you're having a good time when you're having it.
A Life In Hell comic panel titled "The Beginning of Wisdom" has Bongo responding to said phrase with "You mean it gets WORSE?!"

Film

In Vice Versa, the overbearing, stuffy father says something like this, and wishes he were a schoolboy again. Unfortunately for him, he's holding a magic Indian stone that grants wishes.
The movie Show Me Love (Fucking Åmål) has an inversion, which somehow has the exact same horrible effect. Agnes' father tries to be understanding, and says she shouldn't worry — things won't always be this bad, you'll be a lot happier in twenty or thirty years...
- Even the low end of that wait is more than double Agnes's current age (she's 16), so it would seem like an eternity. Also, the wording makes it sound like things won't improve until she's in her mid-thirties or later. Between the two, that's plenty of reason for a teenager to despair.
Much of Dazed and Confused shows how decidedly un-idyllic high school was for the characters in the film. Nevertheless, its release in 1993 was the first inkling of a wave of 70s fashion and music nostalgia in the 90s amongst young people in the United States...

Literature

Used by the narrator's stepfather in Space Station Seventh Grade, though the narrator can think of several reasons why being twelve sucks.
In the Stephen King novel Lisey's Story, one of Lisey's sisters comments to Lisey that they want to get together like "the good old days"; Lisey has flashbacks to her sisters treating her like crap.

Live Action TV

Lois the mother on Malcolm in the Middle. Although occasionally she would flip flop and tell Malcolm that being a kid sucks but it would all get better later.
Summed up by Rab C. Nesbitt: "School days? Best days of your life, if you are a fucking sadomasochist!"

Music

"Have no fear, these are nowhere near the best years of your life" in the country song "Letter to Me" by Brad Paisley.
"Summer of '69", as quoted above, by Bryan Adams (who was 9 years old in the eponymous season.)
- And whether the 69 refers to the year, the sex position, or both depends on Bryan Adams' mood.
"Wasted Years" by Iron Maiden, which was written largely as a response to several extremely hectic years of non-stop touring, with breaks only to go into the studio to record their albums. Made even more ironic given that the album the song came off of (Somewhere in Time) is where many Iron Maiden fans consider the seasonal rot for the band's work began.
Attacked by Pink Floyd in the song "The Happiest Days of Our Lives", which is about abusive teachers in an English boarding school and serves as a spoken intro for "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2".
The Ataris, "In This Diary"'s refrain goes
Being grown up isn't half as fun as growing up
These are the best years of our life
Nirvana's "School", quoted above, is a single stanza criticism of this quote (the only lyrics of the song are "You're in high school again" and "No recess"). However, according to Word Of God, Kurt wrote the song as a Take That to the Seattle grunge scene— he had to suppress his more creative instincts and stick to by-the-book Grunge for Bleach to fit in and get noticed.

Real Life

Truth in Television: Parents say this all the time to high school kids.
- People often say this to elementary schoolers and below too.
This phrase, often verbatim, will show up almost every high-school graduation season, in things like ads congratulating the current graduating class. No one ever seems to notice the fact that you're saying the best years of your life A) likely weren't that great and B) just ended.
Recently, the trope has been inverted with the "It gets better" project, which promises gay students that their school years won't be the best years of their life.

Webcomics

Dinosaur Comics: i peaked in high school.

Web Original

Cruelly, cruelly mocked by The Onion here.
At Everything2: Life does not end at high school.
The Surviving the World blog has this to say: "If the best years of your life were in high school, I hope for your sake you died tragically at nineteen."
The Loner's Journey blog has a post 30 Things I learned in school. Number 19 states "Anyone whoever said 'High School is the best time of your life' should be convicted with assisting suicide and get mental help. Immediately."

Western Animation