Ah, the glorious days of yore, when we lounged on our plaid couches, armed with nothing but a remote control and an endless supply of pizza rolls. It feels like just yesterday that we were shunning adulthood with the tenacity of a Tamagotchi dying because we forgot to feed it for two days. Back in our day, if you wanted to complain about an unreasonable existence, you simply called up your friend on their landline, endured a busy signal, and then ruthlessly argued for two hours about whether “DuckTales” was better than “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers.” Spoiler alert: it was.
Let’s take a moment to remember the pure, unadulterated joy of spending an entire Saturday “mowing the lawn,” which we all know was code for plopping ourselves down in front of the TV, playing “Super Mario Bros.” until our thumbs were as sore as a kid in line for the latest Meg Ryan rom-com. Oh, and don’t even get me started on “Saved by the Bell." That show encapsulated everything we ever glossed over about high school: the bad fashion sense (thank you, flannel shirts and JTT hair), the heart-wrenching romance, and the inescapable knowledge that life would never actually be that cool. We were so very, very wrong.
When we weren’t glued to our televisions, we were likely off riding around on our bikes, armed with nothing more than a Walkman and whatever cassette tape we had managed to scrounge up. If you were lucky, it was Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” If you weren’t, well, you might have been the poor kid stuck listening to Barry Manilow on repeat. Sorry, Kevin. Your taste in music will haunt you until the end of time. We took those joyful bike rides, navigating the streets like we were starring in our very own episode of “The Wonder Years,” when all we really wanted was to feel like we had a secret clubhouse that allowed us to escape the “real world,” which ironically included mandatory summer jobs and the unyielding pressure to, like, have a plan for our lives.
And let’s not forget about the magic of VHS tapes and the deathly suspense of deciding if we should rewind that classic “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” or just pray we could return it before the late fees slaughtered our allowance. The stakes couldn’t have been higher. Some might say those were simpler times; I prefer to say we were just blissfully ignorant, which made life infinitely more entertaining. Who needs therapy when you can just rip through a 90-minute John Hughes movie and call it a day? So here’s to the ’80s and ’90s, the decade where angst wasn’t treated by yoga but by cranking up the volume to “Livin’ on a Prayer.” We didn't know we were missing much, and that was the beauty of it all.