Some of the best days of my life were spent playing "guns" or "army" with my brothers in the woods around our house in KY. Not much about life in KY was good, but I did have a few very good friends, and I had my brothers, and I had summer. I know there are people who are adamantly against giving their children guns as toys. I don't really know how I feel about that, being a kid who had toy guns. I've never shot a real gun in my life, though I know my dad had a .22 rifle. (Actually, he recently told me the story of how he bought the gun when he himself was a boy, and he rode home with it on his bike in downtown Milwaukee. Things were different then, and I desperately wish that my generation knew more about what life was like for our parents.)
New direction. For those select few of you who can claim to be from my generation, weren't the 80's our greatest moment? Forget GenX and all that cynical woe-is-me garbage. I want my Transformers lunchbox back. I want to haggle someone out of their twinkies. I want scratch-n-sniff stickers as rewards for good homework, and I want my sticker album to keep my collection and to make trades. I want Saturday mornings that are filled with cartoons--GOOD cartoons, mind you--and I want Little Caesar's to have crazy pizza deals.
If they tell you that our world is improving, do not believe them. What has caused the breakdown in our culture's moral fabric (for lack of a better term)? Why have we become so...stupid, as to say that truth cannot be determined, or that one person's view is not necessarily better than another's, as if we've lost the ability to think critically? In our rush for progress, let's not forget the way things were, and what made them good. We've all been drilled on what made them bad. Not that things aren't good now, because they are. I hope some kid will be cooing about Pokemon 15 years from now. I just wish that our progressivism nodded to conservativism sometimes, recognizing the good that we came from. History doesn't always have to be bitter.
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G.I. Joe, the great American hero; He-Man and She-Ra; Transformers; (Ninja Turtles were creepin' into the '90s); My Little Pony; Garbage Pail Kids; and the Apple IIe. Print Shop, baby! And look at me now.
While we're at it, let's not forget Ferris Bueller, Family Ties, the A-Team, Back to the Future, Duran Duran, Nickelodeon, MTV playing videos, etc... Ah, what a great decade.
Sesame Street, anyone? Mr. Rogers? Kindergarten?
Sorry I lost you, 1980s.
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