Articles of the Month

Fear of 1980

My biggest fear has come true.

For years when I was a kid, I used to mercilessly mock the CD compilations that waxed nostalgic about eras gone by. My little brother and I would laugh outrageously at the song titles and wonder who would ever want to relive 1950. I snorted with derision at the clothing, the hair, the idea that any of this was ever valuable to anyone. All the while, there nagged at the back of my mind the idea that one day those impulse-buy CD compilation companies would be targeting my generation. But it was okay. In those days, I hadn't even hit awkward adolescence; so I thought nothing of it, only changed the channel and drowned a few brain cells in Ninja Turtle heaven. Then the emails began.

Are you an eighties kid?

I took the quizzes, they were fun; I passed the test with flying colours. After all, I did own a snap bracelet or two, I had indulged in both the Troll and Popple craze, and I even remembered the unfortunate experiment that was clear Pepsi. Heck, I probably have a few My Little Ponies running rampant in my bedside drawers. It was something to be proud of, this 80's kid-ness. We were cool, we were fly; after all, we survived the worst decade known to fashion and even managed to work out a few leftist-ideals despite the self-obsessed culture we grew up in.

I was okay.

After all, we were still a generation without a name. Just the kids who followed Gen X. A generation that was kind of hard to pin down. We didn't hate the world, we didn't not hate the world. We just sort of were. They called us generation y for awhile, but that didn't really stick. Generation y sounds kind of hip, anyways, and kids who grew up in the 80's gave up their claim to hipness when they wore bright purple leggings to school. But then, I graduated high school. All of a sudden I was moving out of my house, into my first apartment, into a new city. All of a sudden I felt like an adult. And all of a sudden, stubbornly forward-thinking me had gotten stuck on nostalgia.

I started to think a CD compilation might not be such a bad idea. It's because I'm on the verge of turning twenty, I tell myself. This is my last year to be a teenager (and, as the bratty little brother tells me, 19 doesn't count as being a real teenager anyways.) We get nostalgic when we go through mid-life crises, right? Tumbling out of reckless teenagehood has got to have some benefits. I've nearly lived through two whole decades. That's got to mean something. I deserve nostalgia. I deserve to make another little kid scared of turning old.

So give me that CD compilation. Give me mass-marketed corporate-controlled things that remind me of my childhood. We may not have had a war to rally around as a generation, but we sure had consumerism. It's a pretty appropriate way, then, for us to graduate to adult life wearing care bear t-shirts, carrying ninja turtles lunchboxes to mass university lecutures. He-man was cool, and I don't care what you think, because I'm old enough to have a CD compilation and you're not (so there. Hah.)

It's just a way of being safe, that's all.

My greatest fear has to be altered, that's it. Just give me a call when the retirement home starts playing Billie Jean.