Where’s The Decade?

I had dinner this weekend with my Godson, who I’m certain was born only a few years ago, yet he seems to be starting high school this year. He is already enrolled in driver’s education, and his existence makes me feel old. Time is a funny thing. It passes by painfully slowly when we’re young, but picks up steam as we move along. Our teen years pass by a little faster than our naughts, and our twenties (if we’re doing them right) move by in a blur, accelerated by oceans of alcohol, endless parties, and way too much sex. Before we know it, we’re in our thirties and looking back on a confusing haze we call the past, where everything seems to be just a little bit closer than it actually is. What looks like yesterday was actually last year, and what looks like last year was, in fact, a couple of decades ago. It’s a confusing endeavor, getting older.

Things are made even more perplexing due to the appropriation of my childhood’s pop culture by the youth of today. During dinner with the Godson, the conversation turned to what’s cool right now. Much to my non-surprise, he quickly said, “Anything retro, like from the ’80s.” Naturally, he started telling me all about the decade I grew up in, as if it were all new to me. Later, I came home and started poking around the Internet, because lately, I’ve come across several fiendishly stupid blogs that are written by people talking about their childhoods, and what it was like to grow up in the 1980s. The only problem is, these people are usually twenty-somethings who aren’t really qualified to portray themselves as ’80s kids – because they did not grow up during the decade. Most of these poseurs are in their early-to-mid-twenties, and so were born no earlier than 1985. Maybe ’84, possibly ’83. I was born in 1975, but I make no claim to the ’70s, much as I’d like to. I wasn’t even born until half of the decade had already passed me by, and I was barely out of diapers by the time it was over. No, I grew up in the ’80s, with the greed and the scandals and the Reaganomics. I spent my time on Channel F, Atari, and Intellivision. I played Space Invaders. In the arcade. With quarters.

I watched all three Star Wars movies in theaters, when they were new. (Well, technically I saw the first re-release of A New Hope in 1981, at a local drive-in. It was a great place, with a huge screen and those little speakers with the tinny sound that clipped onto your car window. Sadly, it was later demolished and turned into a highway-side driving range for the wannabe golfers of the pretending-to-be-rich sect, of which we have so very many in my small corner of Texas.) I watched Michael Jackson debut the Moonwalk. I watched saturday morning cartoons while eating Booberry cereal. I stayed home from school to watch the early Space Shuttle launches, but I was sitting in Science class when the Challenger exploded. I played Pac-Man, but preferred the enhanced speed of his bow-headed spouse. I stood in line to destroy a ray-traced Death Star, and plopped down a Vegas vacation’s worth of quarters trying to help Dirk the Daring rescue Princess Daphne from the Dragon’s Lair. I went to a breakdancing competition at Chuck E. Cheese’s, back when Nolan Bushnell still owned it and it was still cool. A girl doing gymnastics won. Strange.

I saw the rise of Dungeons And Dragons, and the religious hysteria that surrounded it. I saw Halloween transform from a fun holiday for kids, into a twisted and paranoid reflection of a media-saturated culture, where urban myth was reported as fact and thousands of parents protected their children from phantom, razor-bladed apples and non-existent, rat poisoned candy bars. I witnessed the birth of the religious right, even as Jimmy Swaggart cried. I listened to songs without videos, and I wanted my Mtv. I played with Transformers, when they were made of metal and looked like real cars. I saw Optimus Prime die. I read comic books, even as everyone else was collecting them. While I was bending spines and folding pages, friends were sealing them in polyurethane condoms and locking them away in the dark. I cast my vote for the Joker, and I watched in rapturous horror as he murdered The Boy Wonder. I drank Hawaiian Punch and red Kool-Aid, back when you knew better than to ever ask for a Hawaiian Punch, and while the Kool-Aid man was demolishing living room walls across the country. I preferred Tiffany over Debbie Gibson, Transformers over Go-Bots, and Nintendo over Sega. I had a Cabbage Patch Kid. I used it offensively against my sister, by grabbing its legs and spinning it around, using leverage and momentum to create a deadly weapon from the horrible hardness of its terrible plastic head. I got in trouble before parents invented Time Out. Belts were involved. Lots of crying.

Most of all, I just grew up. The world around me was getting more and more complex, even as the media became more and more simplistic. Our leader was an actor turned politician, who I didn’t even trust back when I still had the trusting innocence of childhood on my side. I watched Oliver North spill the beans on a suddenly(?) stupid Ronald Reagan. I saw Dukakis ride in that dumb tank and wearing that silly helmet. (Years later, I watched the same thing, only this time it was an S-3 Viking jet and a flight suit, and nobody was making fun. Weird.) My heroes were Luke Skywalker and and Indiana Jones. The Russians were the bad guys, and Red Dawn was so real, it was scary. Rocky stopped them, though – and he did it without the aid of steroids or the stoic and demanding love of Brigitte Nielsen. Back when he was still just a kid and calling himself Leaf, Joaquin Pheonix reprogrammed a robot named Jinx, and launched one of my boyhood crushes, Lea Thompson, into space. I was also a big fan of not disassembling Ally Sheedy, of letting Mary Stuart Masterson have a boy’s haircut and wear red leather gloves, of Soleil Moon Frye’s Punky-Power and, of course, of anything – anything – Phoebe Cates wanted to do. I may have learned a lot about life and love from John Hughes, but I learned about swimming from Cameron Crowe, at a place called Ridgemont High. Swimming, and boobs.

I guess I don’t really blame twenty-somethings for wanting to stake a claim on the ’80s, now that I think about it. After all, what happened in the freaking 1990s that anyone would want to try and own? Beverly Hills 90210? MC Hammer? Power Rangers? Vanilla Ice? The Taco Bell dog? No, they know that there’s no gold in those unfortunate hills, so they look elsewhere for inspiration. And, lacking any natural talent for invention themselves, they fall back on the safe cushion of the ’80s, usurping the nostalgia from those to whom it truly belongs and trying to pass it off as their own. They wear “vintage” t-shirts bought new yesterday from Hot Topic and Old Navy. They walk around with Pac-Man on their shirts, and wear tiny NES controllers as jewelry. Recently, they talk ad nauseum about Michael Jackson, his genius, and about how important he was to their generation, even as they cite only his work from the ’80s. They go on about how it personally touched them on a deep and emotional level, even though they were sucking bottles and pooping diapers when he first flashed the sparkly glove.

It’s annoying, but like I said, you can’t really blame them. The ’60s and ’70s were too recently pilfered by my own generation, so they’re off limits to the wannabe-retro crowd. All they can do, apart from claiming the actual, depressing reality of the vapid and wonderless culture of their own childhoods, is to fudge the dates a little and fall back on what seems to be working for us thirty-somethings. We’re the ones writing the television shows they’re watching and the movies they’re going to see. We’re the ones telling society what’s hip and cool and in, and right now we like nostalgia. Specifically, 1980s nostalgia – so it’s no surprise that all of you want to like it, too. You can’t really be cool if you’re not doing it, so throw on a hipster uniform and join in. Grow some wacky facial hair, maybe some muttonchops, and pile on the corduroy. Spend a lot of time working on a disheveled, careless look and make sure to throw in some ’80s icons. Maybe a Smurf here, or a Triforce there. A little Mario always works a treat, or maybe toss in some Goonies or Shirt Tales, if you’re feeling daring. Don’t be afraid to show your free-thinking and independently-minded ways by making cult references to the period, either. A little Blade Runner, maybe some Heathers. Be just as unique as we tell you to be!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get ready to decide where we’re eating tonight. I wouldn’t mind washing a McDLT down with a nice, refreshing New Coke, but I’m probably out of luck on that front. We could always trying eating in, for a change. Maybe buy a french bread pizza to cook at lightning speed in our amazing microwave. While we wait, we can sip on some Bartles and James wine coolers and watch a tape of last week’s Friday Night Videos. Later, nothing says dessert like the chocolatey goodness of a Jell-o Pudding Pop.

Yum!

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NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

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