Because of comments made in some other threads, I feel the need to explain just what the eighties meant to me. I was born in 1965, and when the eighties started, I had just turned fourteen. I have no recollection of the sixties, and most of the seventies is irrelevant to me. I disliked the music, the clothes, many of the movies, possibly because it was the stuff my parents watched or listened to. But when the eighties kicked in, everything changed.
I was of an age when decisions about the clothes I wore, the movies I wtched, and the music I listened to were made by me. I had money in my pocket and freedom of choice to do pretty much what I wanted. I'd dress in batwing sweaters, miami vice jackets, crombie coats and trilby hats. I'd go to the cinema to watch movies first time round, on the big screen, and I was always Michael J Fox or Harrison Ford, John Cusack or Judd Nelson. It was a way of escaping into another place, of being a part of something bigger than just my small part of the world.
I would buy big old vinyl albums by the people you only see on VH1 retro shows nowadays. We'd sit around, listening to them all, and just 'being', being different than we were a couple of years earlier, when we were just kids.
I did a whole lot of growing during the eighties, and not just in age. at teh beginning of the eighties, I was still in many ways a child, but at the end of the eighties I was a married man, with responsibilities both emotional and financial. My approach to all of these new life areas were moulded in no small part by the world I had immersed myself in for the past ten years.
So to me, the eighties isn't just about fashion, or about movies, or about music. It's about the war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. It's about the Challenger disaster that I can still picture when I close my eyes. It's about standing in Wembley Stadium watching my team play in the cup Final alongside nearly 100,000 others, all sharing in the one moment. It's about remembering when I was there, and how it FELT to be a part of it all. A movie like No Way Out isn't just a movie to me - it's the movie I saw waiting for the plane the morning after my wedding night. Into The Night is more than just confusing to me. It's also disorienting, because all the plot twists and turns were still going through my mind when I emerged from the dark London theatre into the bright afternoon sunshine of the post-matinee performance. You can't lose this kind of memory. It's all a part of me, and who I am.
I know I've rambled a little, but I needed to let you all know what all this means.
Posted by Janette (Member # 252) on :
Thank you for sharing Paul. It's neat to hear of others experiences, it's always been a thrill for me to hear about others. Maybe it's my nosey part of me. Haha. I was about ten years behind you (born in '75) so I always looked up to the kids who go to do the "teenage" things in the 80s. I loved my childhood and wouldn't exchange any of it. Being an 80's child is part of who I am and I treasure that.
Posted by Ronnie (Member # 465) on :
wow. i enjoyed reading that alot. i can relate to most of what you wrote. thanks for sharing paul. :) and i agree janette, the 80's are a part of our lives, to me.... the best part.
Posted by Ali_with_an_i (Member # 27) on :
Wow Paul. I understand what you are saying. As much as I loved the 80s fashions and music and all, they mean more to me than those things also. That's the last time I would ever see my father walk again. He fell ill and had a massive stroke when he was 37. He became a Quadraplegic(he is paralyzed from the kneck down,like Christopher Reeve). I've been taking care of him ever since. I quit High School because I didn't want to see him go into a nursing home. My older sister had already moved out and my mother struggled to support us. Because he spent a year in Northwestern Hospital in Chicago, the medical bills wiped out my parents life savings and my college fund. I eventually made through High School and college, but I still care for my father on a daily basis. I've put my life on hold because I love him too much to leave him. But I always remember the days when we went to Disney World and saw Goonies 6 times at the theatre. Ahhh the 80s, those were wonderful times.
Posted by P_a_u_l (Member # 1022) on :
It's great to see that the 80s mean so much to so many different people. It really was a unique decade. Pre-sixties, the concept of the teenager didn't exist, and through the sixties and the seventies this was really being developed, as the tv shows of the time show. From Beatlemania and the whole Donny Osmond/David Cassidy thing, the eighties gave young people much more of an identity of their own to choose. The nineties (especially music-wise) was all pretty bland stuff, everything much the same style.
Aahh, the eighties (queue muted strings, and some kind of 'dream-sequence' here...)
Posted by McFly (Member # 354) on :
Great sentiments.
Nice to get another perspective, cuz being ages 4 thru 14 in the 80s, it's influence on me was so different. It was just about the next episode of Family Ties or Night Court, the next Jason movie, Friday night sleepovers playing Atari, racing outside when we heard the ding of the ice cream truck, and simply put...just fun.
No responsibilities (aside from school), the wonderment of girls, where romance was so much more powerful cuz it was new and unexplored. And a big feeling I don't have anymore...safety. As a kid, you knew no one could rob you, mug you, kill you for your wallet, cuz you were a kid. Nowadays as an adult, totally different story.
To have that kind of security back...
Posted by Blondie175 (Member # 77) on :
To me they were the best times of my life. The music, movies, fashions, hair-syles, growing up, and going to high school back then.
