{"id":1933,"date":"2014-03-13T12:23:27","date_gmt":"2014-03-13T11:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1933"},"modified":"2014-03-13T12:23:27","modified_gmt":"2014-03-13T11:23:27","slug":"80s-awareness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1933","title":{"rendered":"80s Awareness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Zelda\"<\/a>Today I saw Kevin Bacon\u2019s video campaign to raise awareness for the 1980s and this is my bit to support him and 80s awareness. I am an 80s kid. Millennials, can you even imagine a world in which you have to write down phone numbers, go outside for fun, and meet people face to face?<\/p>\n

Here are some of the things we had to deal with back in the days before tablets, MP3s, and video games so real that couch potatoes actually consider careers as a sniper.<\/p>\n

Gaming<\/b><\/p>\n

A little thing called D&D, my friends. I was a combat-tested cleric capable of 3rd<\/sup> level spells and healing potions. I know what you\u2019re thinking \u2013 hot! We used to spend rainy days on Mike Barr\u2019s porch, eating bologna sandwiches and getting genuinely freaked out by non-virtual zombie and ogre attacks. We were a simpler folk.<\/p>\n

Later on, there was Nintendo\u2019s Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers. This social network involved all the kids from our street gathering in the one kid\u2019s wreck room who actually had the game. When there was a tech problem our IT department (John) took care of it by slapping the top of the Nintendo and then blowing into the slot.<\/p>\n

If that didn\u2019t work, we went outside.<\/p>\n

Music <\/b><\/p>\n

How, you ask, did we ever live without Mp3 players? We did have them, but we called them “cassette players.” In the 1980s, we had to go to a place called a \u201cmusic store\u201d in order to buy physical cassettes. What\u2019s more, we only bought one at a time. I know, crazy. Can you imagine the inconvenience of being forced to buy one cassette instead of downloading an artist\u2019s entire catalog in 10 minutes? It was a real pain falling in love with one album before moving onto the next. However, as your cassette player ran out of batteries you got to hear what your favorite musician would sound like possessed by a demon.<\/p>\n

Youtube? Not so much. For music videos, which were, you know, all<\/i> the rage, we had to rely on a thing called MTV. MTV was an entirely different entity back in the 1980s, because it used to show \u2013 get ready for this \u2013 music videos. No joke. Wrap your head around that, young\u2019ns!<\/p>\n

Porn<\/b><\/p>\n

If you were lucky, your dad had the Playboy channel or Cinemax (after 11 pm: Skinemax). And at night you could sneak downstairs and peruse. If he didn\u2019t have it, you could fiddle with the dial enough to allow the screen to show you some boobs through streaky lines. Then you could tell your friends about it the next day, being sure to distance yourself from intent by saying, \u201cI was flipping through the channels, when\u2026\u201d This phrase has morphed nowadays to \u201cA friend sent me this crazy clip,\u201d or \u201cOn Reddit there was this video…\u201d Because, let\u2019s be honest, whether it\u2019s the 1980s or now, you never want people to know what you went out looking for to satisfy your sexual curiosity.<\/p>\n

If your dad didn\u2019t have Playboy Channel or getting downstairs at 2 a.m. was tough then you had to improvise with the magazines under your dad\u2019s bed. Sometimes some of the older kids left a stash in the woods. Then you used the 1980s porn generator: your imagination. See, Miss September was usually bent over a stool or lying in some hay and not doing the things that you really<\/i> wanted her to be doing. Therefore you\u2019d have to go to your room and think her into all the scenarios you wanted her to be in.<\/p>\n

Millennials, who do you think makes the porn you are watching now? That\u2019s right, 80s kids.<\/p>\n

Adventure games <\/b><\/p>\n

Yes, at the risk of sounding clich\u00e9d, we called this \u201coutside.\u201d In my little corner of the world we had three venues for our adventures: the woods, the deep woods, and the deep deep woods. This is where we created adventures that lasted all day and usually ended with someone bleeding or at dinnertime.<\/p>\n

Outside adventures were where we got attacked by real life arachnids called ticks and got skin blemishes not associated with sitting on the couch too long or avoiding sunlight to an unhealthy degree.<\/p>\n

Dating Websites<\/b><\/p>\n

You really had to navigate a social minefield to date in the 1980s. Things usually started off when you met a person and had a thing called a \u201cface to face conversation.\u201d Then, if you had interest in them and some courage, you could go on a thing called \u201ca date.\u201d You often arranged this by picking up a telephone, calling the person, and talking to them (and one of their parents) for a short period of time. Then you could go to the movies or hang out at the mall.<\/p>\n

If you had no such person or lacked courage, never fear! You could go to a place where human beings around your age congregated in clothing they wouldn’t wear again until an 80s-themed college party. This was called a \u201cschool dance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tablet <\/b><\/p>\n

Our tablets were called trapper keepers. Mine, since I was a trendsetting cool dude, had a Lamborghini on the cover. This is where we kept all of our school notes, homework, and calendars.<\/p>\n

It was tough living in the 1980s, you had to know when to peg your jeans and play D&D.<\/p>\n

Calling all 80s kids. What else was there? <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I saw Kevin Bacon\u2019s video campaign to raise awareness for the 1980s and this is my bit to support him and 80s awareness. I am an 80s kid. Millennials, can you even imagine a world in which you have to write down phone numbers, go outside for fun, and meet people face to face? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-vb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1935,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933\/revisions\/1935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}