Return to the Eighties

"Oh my God! Like gag me with a spoon", Jen exclaimed as she watched her brother floss his sinuses with a long piece of cooked linguini. This seemed to be a pasta night ritual. Jen was grossed out by it but was certainly amazed that her brother was able to so easily suck a noodle through his nostril and down his sinus cavity and out his mouth. "Get upstairs", mom would yell and that would be it for the dinner time entertainment.

"You wake up for school and you don't want to go....you ask your mom please and she still says no..."Turn that rotten music off", Jen yelled. The stereo went louder and Jen thought well he knows how much I can't stand that, I guess I will blast my stuff.

"...well I gotta think twice before I give my heart away and I know all the games you play cause I play them too....yeah yeah yeah...wake me up before you go-go, don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo". Jen laid on her bed dreaming of George Michael and wasn't fazed by the decibels rising in her brother's room. "KISS 98.5 is proud to present...I was dreaming when I wrote this...maybe I'm just like my mother, she's never satisfied...I never meant to cause you any sorrow, I never meant to cause you any pain...baby I'm a star...Prince and the Revolution coming to the Buffalo Auditorium on December 19. Be there...I only want to see you laughing in the Purple Rain. Running downstairs and tripping over the last step, Jen said, "Mom I need some money, I want to go see Prince". "How much are the tickets?" "Well, I have to call Ticketmaster but I am sure they are not much. I don't know what you see in that short guy with the high heel boots", her mom exclaimed, "He looks like a Mexican sewer rat".

It was the best, cheesiest concert and the first I ever went to and my mom bought me the ticket for my birthday. I dressed up in my best. Jelly shoes, plastic bracelets on both arms multiplied by 50 and tight pinstriped jeans that I had to zip up with a hanger. My mom wasn't letting me out the door. She let me go with a few adjustments. Like cutting the butt right out of the jeans while I was in them and saying, "You can go find another pair to put on". I cried and black eyeliner ran down my cheeks.

When I think of the 80's I think of clothes and music, big hair and a lot of makeup. I see it coming back. I see the jelly bracelets and jelly shoes. Just last week some one in the mall was wearing pinstriped jeans much to my dismay...I couldn't look. I see the mini skirts and the turquoise, pinks and fluorescents. Please...for any of those designers that think that we would gladly put on a pair of leg warmers...help! I know that FAME is making a comeback but I don't want to dress that way anymore. I have been there and done that. No mesh shirts and no high cuts. "Grody man...to the max! Like you know what I mean, you know, like...". I wouldn't have missed the rap music my brother listened to day in and day out or the lively dinner entertainment. I always call it the "bad eighties" but I wouldn't have missed it for the world.