Calling All Children Of The 80's
By: Mark Alden
Tags: 1980s, John Lennon, Culture, Coming Of Age, History

Photo courtesy of cottonbro at pexels.com

I am haunted by the 80’s. Maybe that is because it was the decade where so much happened in such a short period of time in my life, although it may as well have been an eternity while I was living it.

I was only 8 years old on the dark December day in 1980 when John Lennon was killed by the deranged Mark David Chapman. I vaguely remember hearing about it on the Nightly news one evening as I sat beside my mother on the couch bogged down in homework. I don’t think I really knew who John Lennon was at that time, or how much the world had just lost. It would take years to fully understand.

Somewhere around 1982, my memories begin to sharpen. I love Rock -n- Roll by Joan Jett and the Black Hearts and Eye of The Tiger by Survivor from the film Rocky 3 were both monstrous hits. On top of that, Michael Jackson was just beginning his legendary rise to the top of the charts with what would be one of the greatest selling albums of all time titled Thriller, which come to think of it, provided much of the soundtrack for the rest of the decade. And who can forget Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster film E.T. which stayed in theatres for over a year? At the age of ten, that movie was about as impactful as they come. Nearly everyone in my school had a Rubik’s Cube by 1982 and anyone who didn’t well… may as well have been nobody at all. I begged my mother for weeks to buy me one until she finally broke. I was awed and jealous of anyone who could solve it because despite my exuberant expectations, I couldn’t even come close. My greatest accomplishment with it was when I was able to match just two of the six sides. It all went to hell from there, and I remember heaving it against my bedroom wall more than once. My older brother eventually solved it for me, I think, which made me feel even worse.

By 1984 I had gotten my first breakout of acne, my first real crush, and my first somewhat real girlfriend, which amounted to a few artfully folded notes being passed back and forth during school and a couple of phone calls before being dumped via a friend a week or two later. I tried not to be too crushed, but I was only 12 years old, so of course I was anyway.

In 1985 I must have watched the highly anticipated film Back to The Future in theatres probably at least three times, and after it was released on video, several more. I own a copy of it to this day. Also, in 1985, a little home gaming system called Nintendo was first launched, and Irish folk singer Bob Geldof organized more than 75 of the biggest acts of the time including U2, Queen, Madonna, Elton John, and David Bowie for a benefit concert to raise funds for Ethiopian famine. The concert dubbed Live Aid was like nothing anyone had seen since Woodstock, and it took place simultaneously in two locations - one in London’s Wembley Stadium and the other at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. If I remember correctly, Phil Collins somehow managed to perform at both venues. The concert raised an estimated 127 million dollars for famine relief. Just a couple of months later another big concert Farm Aid first took place in Champagne Illinois featuring Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, and B.B. King, just to name a few. It was attended by at least 80,000 people and raised over 7 million dollars. Thanks to Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, and more recently Dave Matthews, the concert has taken place every year since, (excluding 2020) and has raised over 60 million dollars in relief for American farmers.

One day in 1986 one of my teacher’s offered any of us that wanted one a pass to the library to watch the historical launch of the space shuttle Challenger. It was a very big deal. For the first time in history NASA was sending a teacher, Christa McAuliffe, into space, and to top it all off, she was from Concord New Hampshire, a neighboring state. I do not remember why but I declined to go down and watch that day, but I do remember just a short while later classmates who had gone running back into class, faces white as ghosts, and talking all at once. It was difficult to sort out what they were all saying. Then the principal’s somber voice over the loudspeaker said those unforgettable words that I swear I can sometimes still hear, “There has just been a terrible tragedy at Cape Canaveral.” For the first time in my life, I rushed home from school and turned on the television, not to watch my usual afternoon cartoon lineup, but continuous news coverage of the explosion. It is still the only event in my life, aside from 911, that I remember so vividly, where I was, what I was doing, the shock I felt at the time. A few months later, President Reagan bombed Libya in response to threats from its leader Muammar Gaddafi, temporarily escalating tensions with the Soviet Union.

As it was, growing up in the cold war 80’s, you never stopped hearing about nukes. How many the U.S. potentially had, how many the Soviets potentially had, and you lived in fear of catastrophic world war 3 scenarios. With films like The Day After and Red Dawn (the first film ever to carry the PG-13 rating) how could you not be a little wary of the potentialities? The artist Sting, in his first solo album, addressed these fears in a song simply titled Russians. The words in the chorus went something like I hope the Russians love their children too.

By the end of the 80’s my school years were wrapping up and I was well on my way to becoming an adult — the moment I had always looked forward to, though I am not sure what I expected to happen once I finally got there. I should have listened to my parents when they used to tell me that I shouldn’t be in such a hurry.

In 1988 while I was still in high school, I began my first job. And just as my mother had always told me, once you begin working you never stop. That has pretty much been the case. Kudos to mom for getting it right.

With all of that said, hardly a day goes by it seems when something doesn’t pop out of the 80’s like a phantom jack in the box and clobber me with an old memory or two, or maybe ten. Hell, all I need to do is wander down into the basement to retrieve something or other where after all these years, for some unknown reason, there are still a few dusty VHS tapes kicking around with old hand written titles on the labels and nothing left to play them on.