I Want My MTV

I am a child of the ‘80s.  I find it perfectly reasonable when actors want to be politicians.  I cried when Corey Haim died.  I do not apologize for this; it was not a bad time to grow up, and had a big influence on who I am today.  Would I be as fun-loving as an adult if I hadn’t had a Cabbage Patch Kid as a child?  Could I relate to these kids today with their Twilight crap if I hadn’t had a similar obsession with Duran Duran at their age...and as an adult?  (How is it that John Taylor manages to look better every year when he was so good looking to start with?)

Are YOU a child of the ‘80s?  Take a look and see if any (or all) of these describe you:
  

• You can remember a time when Bret Michaels didn’t wear a bandana, did wear lipstick, and you thought “Talk Dirty to Me” was the sexiest song ever.
• You thought Wacky Packages were hilarious.
• Your school had a smoking area.
• Michael J. Fox was famous only for playing Alex P. Keaton, and Johnny Depp was known only as the cute guy on 21 Jump Street.
• When you got in to a car, was no such thing as a seatbelt law or child car seat requirements, and only rich people had electric windows.
• You can recite the words to the Facts of Life theme song.
• You realized with horror that the hole in the ozone layer meant impending doom – not for the planet, but for your beloved Aqua Net.
• You remember when MTV was created, and all it aired were music videos and the occasional break for MTV News.
• Only preppies wore Izod shirts and Reeboks.  The cool kids were wearing sweatshirts with ripped shoulders and jelly bracelets, all in fluorescent.
• Your biggest headache of the week was trying to find a replacement needle for your record player.
• Coolest Concert EVER:  Band Aid.

Perhaps you laugh.  Perhaps you want to debate with me whether “Feed the World” was better or worse than “We are the World.”  But the truth is, the horrible things that Baby Boomers think Generation X will remember – the cold war ending, Reaganomics, Rock Hudson dying of AIDS – aren’t necessarily what we as adults think about when we reminisce about our childhoods.  We like to remember the good times – when David Bowie crooned “Let’s Dance” and felt fedoras were all the rage.  (Were they all the rage?  Now that I’m thirty years out of the 80’s, my memory’s not so good.)  I like to remember a time when if you weren’t sure if you liked a cereal, you could ask Mikey to try it. When said cereals came with a real prize inside.  And, of course, whenall the radio stations played Duran Duran – not just the oldies station.