:: M squared T ::

:: Sunday, January 18, 2004 ::

Blogger Idol

Darren's got us thinking about the 80's this week.

Here's my thoughts:

I am not a child of the 80s; I was a child in the 80s. Though I was born during the Carter administration, I remember asking my mother (during the 1984 election year) why anyone would want anybody other than Ronald Reagan for President of the USA. I thought he'd been president forever. I didn't know anything about his politics. Same story with Big Jim Thompson, Governor of Illinois. (At least he was easier to spell than Blagojevich!)

I vaguely remember the 1983 Illini Football team that lost horribly to UCLA in the 1984 Rose Bowl. I didn't watch the game, but I remember that everyone at church was upset about it afterwards.

I went to Kindergarten in 1984, after my Mom gave up trying to home-school me. (grin) "Dress Clothes" for 5-year-old boys meant slacks, a turtleneck and a cardigan, with brown "penny loafers." I wore that to church and for school picture day. I wore my hair in the ubiquitous "bowl cut."

I remember the Challenger disaster, but since I didn't have a TV, I imagined the spacecraft looked like the old Saturn V rockets used to propel the Apollo missions to the moon. After my Dad discovered this, we went to the library and found some newer books on space.

I remember playing with copious amounts of Legos, and having an elaborate Star Wars action figures "pretend" with my best friend while Illinois lost to Michigan in the 1989 Final Four.

I remember Cub Scouts and the Pinewood Derby where my cars always won prizes for artistry and creativity but not for speed.

For me, the rest of the 80s was filled with games of "boys chase girls" on the playground, building treehouses and underground forts (which my parents always made us fill in at the end of the day), learning how to ride a bike (ouch), catching minnows in the creek, building elaborate "electronic" devices out of a solar-powered calculator, (disassembled) desk phone and a scrap of 5/8" plywood. I sang in the children's choir at church, and sang "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" so loud from the swingset in the late afternoon that the neighbor lady came and sang it through the fence with me.

The 80s ended when I was in 5th grade.

:: Matt 1/18/2004 04:59:00 PM :: permalink :: ::
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