The 80's turned 40 yesterday

Hola,

Before I get going, if you love, love, LOVE word games, please visit one of my dear blogger buddies, Elephant's Child as she hosts a weekly Wednesday for Words event that is so much fun!!

I'm helping out with the choice of words for the next few weeks and the game is ON!

Now, I would have so posted this yesterday, but many of us who were teens in the 80's were probably having a nap.

Depeche Mode - and I still Just Can't Get Enough - 40 years on!!

The 80's (apostrophe, or not, be damned) were so awesome. God, I loved growing up with the 10 lads that I've known - and still know - since I was five years old. We hit the 80's running and the single, GREATEST thing about the decade that started 40 years ago today is that ALLLLLLL the idiotic adventures we did together remains in the murky past, and are only ever mentioned as beer-spitting-out-of-mouth laughter-memories when we meet up for our annual night out :)

The Breakfast Club... was there ever a greater meeting of minds :)

Thank you, whomever you are, for not widely rolling out the Internet until the 90's came along and we didn't care by then because we were, for the most part, trying out grownup stuff like marriage and mortgages. 

When tracksuits were essential clothing choices...

I can't imagine what the teens of today will write about in 40 years as they look back on the Roaring 20's 2.0, and I may not even be around, so who cares, but I can guarantee that they won't have the simple, honest fun as we Children of the Eighties had.

We were a Hot Mess, and we loved it! The only likes I needed (or wanted) were from the lads standing shoulder-to-shoulder next to me... or sitting around a table/floor/abandoned house/underground water pipes under construction/asbestos-filled roof of an old factory 30-40 feet high.

Christmas music will never be the same...

One day on that roof, as we invincibles kicked our feet back and forth on the edge, we watched a fella on a red Honda 50 drive up and down the canal road, just up and down, for about 10 minutes. He stopped in front of us, about 50 yards away and seemed to have trouble with his belt. When he finally sped off, we went over and stood in a quiet circle, wondering what the white stuff on the ground was!

A fiver went a long, long way back in the 80's

I went and left school during this decade; gathered up the secret, delivery lane behind the smelly pub and read the articles inside a well dog-eared edition of Playboy; got hired and fired and fell in love with Samantha Fox and Kathy Lloyd as they graced Page 3; kissed a girl (but didn't make her cry) for the first time after waiting 3 hours for her under Dublin's famous Cleary's Clock; saw friends get married - and harried; went on holiday to places not called "Holland" or "Wexford;" survived camping weekends with a future-convicted pedophile; drank my first 2-gallon flagon of cider (it wouldn't be the last!); started the decade skating around the roller rinks of Crumlin and happily finished the 80's skating around the red light district of Amsterdam - and can honestly say I looked, but never partook. 

Nancy and Mr. T share a moment!!!

And with much of "our" music still going strong -- special thanks to Depeche Mode for making it this far -- I think we grownups who are in, or heading toward, our sixth decade (how did we get so old, so quickly??) can look back with Axel-Rose tinted glasses and say that while it wasn't perfect (what is?) we were, as the Pet Shop Boys best put it, certainly never Being Boring.

Big screen TV's where we watched...

...An old Dr. Who turn into Wurzel Gummidge...

When traffic on the 405 actully moved!!

How we used to get info from the Telly :)