If there were two chain restaurants that could define my culinary youth beyond the parameters of my parents' kitchen and the drive-thru window, they would have to be Farrell's and Bob's Big Boy. It's not all that difficult to imagine why a pudgy-kid-turned-corpulent-adult like me would have fond memories of either: The former had copious amounts of gargantuan desserts in which I could indulge, and the latter offered a foray into food as a canvas for flavor creativity via items like chili spaghetti and pastrami burgers.

Needless to say, when both chains so cruelly left the landscape, the foodie inside me was a little crestfallen. After all, so many good memories stemmed from both places, it was like a part of my childhood went poof when they dissolved into the ether. And even as I developed an addiction to such delights as Island's Irish nachos and other more sophisticated eats, there was a part of me that longed for the return of these two bastions of my youth.

And now they are back. And for some reason, I can't get myself to eagerly jump toward their doors. Hell, I can't even muster the gumption to point my sneakers toward their direction. It's enough to make me feel like I suffer from the antithesis of Peter Pan syndrome.

I've tried to figure out why I'm not champing at the bit to get to these hallowed joints of yore, and the only thing I can come up with was this: I don't want to disrupt nostalgia. I am afraid that I'll walk into Farrell's and find it to be severely lacking in the charm that exists in my memory bank. Conversely, I'm nervous that I'll sit in a booth at Bob's and be hypercritical of every piece of food that is set before me, including inanely minute quibbles such as the buns not being as loaded with sesame seeds as I remembered. I guess I just don't want my wistful childhood memories lessened by the rigidity of my adult cerebrum.

Perhaps one day that will change, but for now, such feelings feel pretty steadfast. And deep down inside me, I know that it's a shame.