1980s Rewind: The Lost, the Grody and the Totally Awesome

Come with me back in time...

To the era when MTV was new, Michael Jackson still had a nose, and a t-shirt reading, "Where's the Beef?" evoked high fashion and big laughs.

There are some excellent lists of "What it Was Like to Grow Up in the 80s" out there, but I figured today we'd tackle some of those details left unmentioned-- Cabbages style. So grab your jeans jacket and hold onto your slouch socks, my babies, because we're about to drive our muscle car up over that hidden ramp...

Can I get a "yeeeee-haw"?

• Shoelaces so funky, tying them was taboo. What was it about the 80s that had us so focused on our footwear? Even though Velcro had just been invented, the boys preferred these enormous fat shoelaces in their high-top sneakers. Sometimes two sets in two different colors, like red and black. But in spite of spending all that time lacing up those shoes, you never TIED them. Oh, no. You tucked them inside your shoe with no knot, no bow. That way, when you went to play kickball, your shoe would also soar up, up, up... giving an all-new meaning to those “Air Jordans.” Many a recess created one-shoed boys. Also the clomping and scuffing noise in the hallways was astounding. Note: Girls often had rainbows or hearts or smiley faces or unicorns printed on their shoelaces. We tied our shoes.
  

• Hair with its own zipcode. A girl in my junior high class said she used an entire can of hairspray on her hair each day, proving there really was something stronger than the Law of Gravity—80s Aquanet. I myself wasn’t quite that zealous, but I did experiment one year with bangs (for my British friends, “fringe”) which curled up high enough to tune in the aerial television set. If you wanted to wear a ponytail, you wore it in a banana comb, thus creating a sort of hair-covered mohawk look. You still teased your bangs.
  

• Murder, mayhem and mustaches. Every night there was at least one detective program on television. Hart to Hart…. Moonlighting… Magnum, P.I.… Simon and Simon…. Matt Houston… Remington Steele… Probe… Riptide… The list went on and on. And there was an 80% Chance of Mustache on at least one detective per program. One noticeable exception would be on Remington Steele, though I think Stephanie Zimbalist might have waxed.

• Paranoid Playlists. "Who Can It Be Now?"... "I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me"… "Eye in the Sky"… "They're Coming to Take Me Away..." Pink Floyd's entire "Wall" album... Kids in the 80s grew up in a time so paranoid, even our pop music was nervous.

• Safety pins plus beads equaled awesomeness. I recall spending amazing amounts of time putting small colored beads onto tiny safety pins and giving my chums these personalized works of, er, art. These went on our sneakers. If you were a girl who didn’t have any friendship pins, you were a girl without any friends. (Yeah, yeah, you could just make a bunch for yourself, but that was cheating. Also, don't forget-- each of us tried to have our own signature beads and beading style!)

• Made-for-TV horror movies that still cause nightmares. The 80s were great for cheesy, original, made-for-TV movies that scared the Kool-aid out of us kids. Like Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, where those little monsters lived in the fireplace. Or the Trilogy of Terror with Karen Black. Or Don't Go To Sleep with Valerie Harper. Or From the Dead of Night with Lindsay Wagner. Bad choices had ramifications. Even kid characters faced danger and possible death. No one was spared. And for some reason we, as kids, were allowed to watch ‘em.

• You started each school year with a new Trapper Keeper. This school binder had a place for everything, and everything in its place. Also, you could get it in cool rainbow, unicorn, tiger, denim or heavy metal looks. What they never told you was that in order for it to organize you, you actually had to be organized. So my Trapper never quite held up to its hype. I was a scholastic slob. Even the Mead Corporation could not save me.
  

• Blindingly fluorescent was cool beans. Girls -- and even guys-- willingly sported sweatshirts, tiny jogging shorts and socks in retina-burning, day-glo colors normally reserved for hunting season. During eighth grade band, the entire flute section seemed to pulse with color conflict, as Suzy, Kelly and the gang sat side-by-side in a vibrating rainbow of fluorescent shades. No wonder our band director got cranky.
  

• No one ever got hurt in ten car pile-ups. On television shows like the A-Team, CHiPs and the Dukes of Hazzard, cars would jump, flip, roll and even blow up from 37 different camera angles, but the passengers were never hurt. We know this because they would have a voice-over discussion about it, where even cold-hearted bank robbers asked their steely-eyed partners if they were all right. This made it non-violent. Also, Stephen J. Cannell seemed to think we wouldn't notice if both Hunter and the guys from Riptide used the catchphrase, "It works for me."
  

• Underwear went outer. Socks were pulled up over our pantlegs, belts went over our sweaters and boustiers went with skirts. I recall parents lamenting that, "Next, kids would be wearing their boxers and tightie whiteys over their jeans." Then Marky Mark showed up with his drooping drawers and visible undies. Yet, somehow we never quite saw that coming.

• The Rules about Rots and Rulez. At least in my school, things were broken into two categories. They either rotted, or they ruled. Decomposition, while a natural process, apparently had negative connotations for teenagers. Probably due to a bad experience in Earth Science classes. But since we were high school kids and, thus, optimists at heart, most things ruled. And honestly, ANYTHING could rule. You could get an "A" on your essay, find your misplaced Velcro KISS wallet, or get the new Yngwie Malmsteen album on sale, and it would all rule equally. Whereas Doug Sherman who sits behind you in homeroom and snaps your bra each morning... well, he rots.
  

So what springs to mind when YOU think the 80s? Drop me a comment-- I'd love to hear about your totally rad memories.

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