The '80s were grody to the max!

When I see '80s nostalgia, it gags me with a spoon! As someone who spent her teenage years in the 1980s, I am qualified to declare that the '80s sucked! Totally. First of all, I had to spend at least an hour doing my hair before I could leave the house. Everything was excessive in the '80s, especially hair. The entire U.S. looked like the Jersey Shore! Blow dryer, mousse, hot rollers, curling iron, ratting, Aqua Net, more ratting, more Aqua Net, flip hair upside down, more Aqua Net...I personally apologize to the ozone layer for my 1980s hair. The biggest nemesis of an '80s hairstyle was rain, which would turn our helmet hair into slimy goo! Also, open flames were to be avoided at all costs.  "Your hair, your hair, your hair is on fire, we don't need no water..."

Then there were the super skinny jeans, which unlike today's variety were not made out of comfy stretchy denim. No, they were completely unforgiving. In order to get them on, you had to lay down on the bed, suck everything in, hold your breath, shimmy into them, and then pry the zipper closed. If it was too hard to pull it up with my fingers, I would hook a wire coat hanger through the zipper and yank. There's no way I would have been able to do martial arts wearing those jeans!

Don't even get me started on video games in the 1980s! At least we did have home systems, so we didn't have to hang out at the arcade, but there were serious flaws, especially the lack of memory so you couldn't save your game. If you had been playing for seventeen hours straight, and you were just about to beat the big boss, and then your stupid sister tripped over the cord and unplugged it, you had to start all over...from the beginning!!! Crappy controllers with cords on them, and repetitive midi music that would seep into your brain and play in your head every time you tried to go to sleep! It's only been a few years since I finally stopped having Tetris nightmares.

I must admit that I do still have an enormous fondness for '80s music, but our method of listening to it back then sucked, despite what my husband (who still listens to cassette tapes) thinks! I do agree with him that cassettes are slightly better than CDs (because I can usually repair a broken cassette with a pencil and tape, but a broken CD is garbage), and 8 tracks were one of the stupidest things ever created. Walkmans were better than boomboxes, but my iPod makes all of them look like a ridiculous joke!

Shoulder pads sucked, pantyhose sucked, Cabbage Patch Kids sucked, jelly shoes sucked, the Cold War sucked, mullets sucked, Rubik's cubes sucked, acid-washed jeans sucked, leg warmers sucked, the PMRC sucked, being a teenager sucked...

Oh alright, the 1980s weren't all bad. Besides the music, there are a few other things I liked...slam-dancing, break-dancing, Super Mario Bros., 21 Jump Street, scratch and sniff stickers, The Smurfs, ponytails on the side of the head, my Adidas, friendship bracelets, The Lost Boys, roller-skating, Trapper Keepers, fingerless gloves, Doc Martens, mohawks...

And why were glasses so huge in the '80s?
Was it so when you looked at them sideways
they looked like a big number eight?

They say that if you can remember the '80s, then you weren't really there. No, wait, that's the '60s, and I was only around for the last six months of that...which I don't remember at all, so they're right! No matter how much I sometimes wish I could forget the '80s, I can't deny the impact that the decade had on me. If I had only known that things were going to be so much cooler when I grew up! Back to the Future lied about the hoverboards, but most of the new millenium has been righteously tubular!

Top five '80s slang words I still use on a regular basis:

5) Wicked. 4) Dude. 3) Like. 2) Totally. 1) Awesome.