What was it really like growing up in The Eighties? I get this question a lot…
There is a fascination with growing up in The Eighties, and you may find this surprising, but so many from the younger generation have become so intrigued by the decade as a result of all of the superhero films and streaming shows that pay homage to the decade (Stranger Things being one such show, and Cobra Kai being another), that they’re actually part of a growing creator segment building fan pages celebrating The Eighties and The Nineties!
The years between 1980 and 1995 were really incredible. I believe there is a residual greatness that followed the 1980s, and it rolled through to about 1995. I turned thirteen in 1989, so being a teen in the early nineties was really fun.
But let’s go back to 1982 when we only had a few television channels, and depending on the region you lived in, you could have had up to seven channels. If there was nothing good on, tough luck - there was no cable TV or streaming like it exists today. The most incredible thing came out of this though, something future generations will never experience, and that is that this limited access connected all of us growing up in The Eighties. We were watching the same things, and when we got to school, we talked about the things we watched. I ask my teenage son what the talk is about in school and he says kids don’t really talk about tv pop-culture all that much at all. Well, that’s the stuff that connected the younger generation from our time.
We didn't get our first VCR until around 1984. So, if we missed a movie in the theater, we had to wait until it aired on TV, which might take forever. Personally, I didn’t start going to the theatre until around 1985, and it was few and far between. I really didn’t hit my stride until 1989 when we moved to California. Still, prior to that, it was always a thrill when classic films like “The Wizard of Oz” or “The Sound of Music” were broadcast annually. During the holidays we could look forward to seeing the Rank & Bass Claymation films and the Charlie Brown cartoons.
Around 1986/1987 we moved to Oak Park, MI and rented a home that actually had a microwave. My mom never used it though because she said it would give us cancer. So it just sat there. Admittedly, I used it a few times without her knowledge. Sorry mom.
We also got cable TV, which included MTV, a must-have for any '80s kid. Most of the entertainment I took in was enjoyed at a cousin’s or neighbor’s home prior to that. If you had cable tv during those days, your home was everyone’s entertainment spot!
I made a friend named Bradley. His family was awesome, and we played with G.I. Joes together… and he had a Nintendo. I really just wanted to add this in case Bradley ever sees this. Had I not met his family I’m not sure I would have had all the amazing childhood experiences I did. They were a middle class family and Bradley was always generous with his toys.
Bradley, I think you loaned me your Mike Tyson’s Punch Out and I never got it back to you. I’m sorry. If we ever meet again I’ll give it back to you.
When we finally got a cordless phone, it felt like a luxury to be able to talk on the phone outside of the kitchen. I can’t remember having a cordless phone until the 1990s. We were chorded and landlocked throughout the 1980s.
For school projects, we turned to the Encyclopedia Britannica or headed to the local library, and if that didn't work, we asked our dad, who we assumed knew everything. He did not.
Although all of this may sound archaic to the younger generation, it was a simpler time, and as children, we enjoyed far more freedom. Without technology to keep us indoors, we spent our days outside, roaming the neighborhood all summer long. There were no cell phones, so if we wanted to stay at a friend's house for dinner, we simply had their parents call ours. If we wanted to hang out the following day, we made commitments before we went inside for dinner.
Riding bikes without helmets, playing in the rain, and spending hours building forts were a few of our favorite pastimes. If it was hot enough to cook eggs on the street, we all met up at the fire hydrant mid-day for a neighborhood water event. One of the adults would remove the cap and crank the valve open, and we would be the happiest kids in the world.
Things weren’t all sunshine and rainbows.
Detroit in the eighties was something else. It was gritty and dangerous. There were rules. Street rules. When someone my age says we grew up fast, we mean it. That truth is a combination of conditioning at home as well as on the streets. I’m a first generation immigrant kid, so I joke that my first mustache hair was white.
I was just a kid and I knew where not to go at certain times of the day. There were friendlies and there were unfriendlies. And even beyond that there were the crazies. They were hopped up on drugs and known to be extremely aggressive. Imagine the infected from 28 Days Later. You never wanted to encounter the crazies. Ever.
There were many abandoned homes we could explore near State Fair and 7-Mile Road. Before we took off on our adventure we made sure to plan ahead, because some of the places we wanted to explore were near drug dealer corners and gang alleys– I mean, the kind of alleys that were also very dangerous during the day. We also knew that although exploring abandoned homes was fun, we needed to be very careful because we never knew who might be in them as a form of temporary shelter, or if they were even safe structurally. We heard stories of kids being forced to take drugs and even kidnapped never to be seen. The images of missing children on the back of milk cartons will forever be engrained in our heads.
A few of us carried M-80 firecrackers leftover from the previous July 4th holiday with us in case we wanted to really invent some fun in those abandoned homes… or, and this happened a few times, we needed to get away from crazies… or, we pretended we were trying to get away from crazies. It’s really something else to reflect on, that even those things didn't stop us from making our adventure.
On rainy days, we would play board games like Monopoly, Hotels, Solar Quest, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Mouse Trap, or Operation, just to name a few. More often than not, we'd just sit on the porch and watch the storm and think about all the fun we were going to have when the rain cleared. We listened to music, wrote our own stories, sorted our baseball cards, read comic books, or spent time reading sections of the TV Guide and memorized the Saturday morning cartoon schedule. I used to spend so much time making my own mixtapes on the hand-me-down boombox we had. Sometimes we went outside to play and ride our bikes in the puddles. We built make-shift and dangerous ramps to jump those puddles. Sometimes we landed the jumps, and other times we didn’t and we returned home with cuts and scrapes.
I’m often asked why I feel so strongly that there will neve be another time like The Eighties again. I think the best way to describe it is with this analogy.
Let’s say The Eighties are like a 2-liter soda bottle you just bought. As you twist open the cap, there's a satisfying hiss that fills the air, like the whisper of a thousand tiny bubbles coming to life. The bubbles race to the surface, and the aroma of sweet, tantalizing flavor envelops you. You take a drink and that first sip is exhilarating. The fizz tickles your tongue, and it’s a moment of pure bliss. But here’s the thing. As the soda bottle sits out, the lively fizz gradually fades, leaving behind a stillness that echoes the passing of time. The bubbles, once vibrant and full of life, now settle into a quiet resignation. The soda's once invigorating flavor grows dull, losing its edge and sinking into a flat, subdued sweetness. But that sweetness is deceiving, and now replaced by a mellow, lackluster taste. The vibrant spirit of the soda has slipped away, leaving only a memory of the effervescent joy it once brought. Similarly, each decade after the eighties has been a slow deterioration of the brightness and fullness we once lived through. I bet you if you asked a nineties kid if this is true, they would agree. There was still fizz and verve in the nineties. The flavor began to fade in the late 2000s and if I had to pinpoint an exact moment, it would be June 29, 2007. The smartphone ushered in the false sweetness this generation has come to know, and is just now coming to grips with.
Yes, The Eighties were truly wonderful, and I believe being a kid in the 1980s made them more wonderful. Although there were hardships and adversity, there was the sort of freedom and hope you clung to, and your neighbors looked out for you. I’ve spoken to so many from my generation and the consensus is that we took so many things for granted back then, having no idea how drastically things would change over the years. We were just living in the moment.
Today, my generation watches with amazement how the vast web of connectivity somehow continues to diminish real connections between members of society. This is why we feel cautious about the pace and impact of technology.
I remember watching Back To The Future II when I was a kid and it instilled in me this sense of wonder about what the future was really going to look like. I think we were all excited about one day having hoverboards, flying cars, and self-lacing shoes. There was going to be progress. And despite the futuristic setting, the movie emphasized timeless values such as the importance of family, relationships, and staying true to one's principles.
However, the plot of BTTF II also emphasizes how actions taken in the past can have unforeseen and often negative consequences in the future (Biff’s use of the sports almanac). So, while progress has certainly been made, we’ve compromised simplicity and embraced a false sense of connectivity, leaving us to question whether our advancements are truly beneficial or if they’ve come at too high a cost.
Thank you for reading this excerpt from my future publication. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, I would be so grateful if you shared it. That would totally make my day, week, and year tbh. Please let me know if you’d like me to share more excerpts from my book as I work on it. Stay rad!
~ John
GROWING UP IN "THE EIGHTIES" - What it was really like