The 80s
Yo, Dude!
Born in 1972, I am totally a Gen-Xer. I grew up with unsupervised television and a shoelaced key around my neck. I was stoked about Madonna; my bffs wigged out about Michael Jackson and Duran Duran. I wore bitchin, neon colored, off-the-shoulder, oversized sweatshirts to school and changed my awesome Swatch to match. My sister was a bodacious babe in a thick shoulder pad blazer with pink and grey geometric, high waisted pants. After school we’d roll around the neighborhood on skinny skateboards, listening for our parents to yell our names so we could book it home for our microwaved dinner. In the evenings we’d watch movies, thanks to the VCR, letting the answering machine take our calls. It was the 1980s and it was a John Hughes movie.
BOOM in the room - 80s edition
The pose, the hair, I had it all.
Mall rat preppies ran the school. No duh! Dark-sider goths sat brooding against lockers in the art room hallways. Bummer! Burnout headbangers smoked cigarettes outside of the wood shop. Barf me out! Grody to the max! Geeky dweebs talked about dork stuff in the AV Club while Izod-wearing jocks contemplated their next creative wedgies. Face, nerd!
On weekends we all went to the roller skating rink arcades, which eventually gave way to the Nintendo Entertainment System and Rollerblades. We could go home to use an Apple 2E and could go outside with a boombox, boasting two tape decks, to play our favorite mixtape. 8-track tapes became cassettes (with a #2 pencil always handy). Flat hair became the biggest non-updo hair in a century. Landlines gave way to...Psych! J/K. As if! Unless you were, like, totally rich and could afford a righteous mobile car phone, gnarly landlines were still a thing. Bogus! If you were way lucky (or they were way annoyed) your parents might get a second line so you could talk to your friends on your tubular see-through phone with the extra long cord while your little brother listened in on your private gossip on the fancy kitchen cordless. Dude! Bag your face, I am so sure!
Bag your face
We look totally bodacious!
Gag me with a spoon! Take a chill pill, dude. Sit and spin, poser! We adopted our vernacular from West Coast surf and Valley culture, argued about the Satanism of D&D in chat rooms, and slam danced in mosh pits to punk and metal music we discovered on MTV.
The influence of the 80s is ubiquitous in my life, manifesting itself in my speech, style, and Gen-X perspective of the world. It was a neon-lit decade of high energy, bright colors, and gem sweaters.
Here’s to the bitchin 80s. Radical!
TifDynamite🧡