When you grow up, there are certain milestones you can foresee that mark your passage to maturity. You start driving. You get to vote. You move out of the house. You get married. You get a permanent job. You have kids. You buy a house. You have grandchildren. There are less obvious ones, too, like suddenly discovering that it is socially acceptable to call adults you've just met by their first names.

For me, the most unpredictable and enduringly surprising one of all is how there teenagers -- the ones in control of pop culture since the 50s -- who were not alive when you were that age. This is an oft-discussed subject here. I've finally gotten over how there are young adults, some with actual children, who were born *after* Star Wars hit the theaters. If you're in that age range, laugh while you can, because in the 2020s, young parents will be telling you the same thing about the Lord of the Rings films, and the joke will be on you.

Anyway, to get around to my point, this:

> I always thought life was better then, somehow, simpler.

...is the most hilarious slap of this sort I've ever heard. You make the 1980s sound approximately as distant and rustic as the 1880s. There were no cars back then, or planes or radios or them new-fangled phones. When we wanted a drink of milk, we mucked out to the pasture and squeezed out a glass ourselves!

You're probably old enough to recognize that time goes by faster as you get older, but not quite old enough to experience first-hand just how much that acceleration will amount to. For me, the 1980s is about as distant as 2001 or so is to you. At least, that's what I figure, based on remembering back in the 1980s on how I then perceived the 1960s -- surprisingly recent, when you just say "20 years," yet nevertheless lost in the mists of time.

More hilarious yet, this post is probably making me sound absolutely ancient to anyone under the age of 20 or so, which is much of the RinkWorks audience, but here's some perspective: to more than half the nation, I'm still a young'un.

Let me tell you about the 70s and 80s. At the time, it wasn't the iconified, glorified memory it's become. You read articles in Time and TV Guide about the greatest moments of the 20th century, or you watch a VH1 retrospectives on some year in the 80s (or, heaven forfend, 90s) in music, and it sure seems that way. But, predictably, the forgettable moments get forgotten. Ok, so in three seconds of air time on TV, Michael Jackson singlehandedly started a nationwide dancing fad with that moonwalk thing nobody had ever seen before. Pac-Man came out and singlehandedly turned a weird, geeky niche entertainment venue into this dazzling, exciting, (but still geeky) sensation, to the point where Pac-Man tournaments were televised. The music video was invented, and the brand-new MTV hit the airwaves with the words, "Ladies and gentlemen, let's rock and roll!" and aired, ironically, the video for The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star." "Top Gun" was released and tempered cold war paranoia by giving us heroes (however fictional) that knew how to rock out in the Danger Zone as they were shooting down the Russians.

You -- heck, even I -- look back on these moments with a kind of awe, because we know, after a moment's thought, just how amazingly these little moments changed the face of pop culture nationwide and even worldwide.

At the time, it was just the way it was. We knew something cool was happening, but not something enduring or defining, certainly not something we ever thought we'd look back on. Of the four sample moments I just named, two I only became aware of long after the fact, and the other two only impressed me later as I thought back on them and realized just how outrageous, say, televised video games really are. (Full disclosure: I spent much of the 80s overseas, so I'm not a good test case. Still, I think my feelings are similar to most anybody's of my generation.)

Now that it's the 2000s, I'm into the 80s more than I ever was at the time. At the time, I was fascinated by the 50s and 60s. But as the ubiquitousness of 80s culture has faded and the stupid parts of it have been forgotten, only recently have I realized there were things actually worth paying attention to.

Undoubtedly, it will be the same for you, in the 2020s. Sure, scoff all you want now about the state of music, but when the VH1 retrospective for the 2000s only ever mentions the best 100 moments of the whole decade, it'll sure look like a sweet time to live.