Teaching About The AWESOME 80's

The cute little baby in this picture is now married, hard to beleive

    As a child we would travel in our family car with the "oldies" station cranked.  Oh The Mama's and The Papa's would just be singing their little hearts out.  Up in the front seat my Mom and Dad would be singing along with goofy smiles on their faces.  Oh they would just be bopping along to the songs from their youth.  Sometimes Mom would make a comment on what she was doing when that song was originally out.   I so wished that that family car had a back seat door, so that I could have hurled myself out of the car and into on coming traffic!  Overly dramatic, well may just a smidge, but I remember thinking it was pretty bad!

    Fast forward 25 years, and Christopher and I will sometimes crank the tunes on the satellite (we are so much kinder than my parents because on the car radio we listen to the current hits).  We will get goofy smiles, and sing along.  It is a terrible reminder that we're old, because we are listening to the music of our youth, only it's not the gross "oldies" it's the cool "80's".  We are working hard to educate our children, and teach them important history.  It's important that they know that the music from the 1980's was the greatest decade for music, ever, and well may ever be.  I make no such claims on the fashions of the 1980's. Oh I remember looking so cool with my silky long blouse, and my tights, and my Peter Pan Get Away Boots (they had terrible soles on them, and I was always falling on my back.  One time I was wearing them and as I took a step up to get onto my school bus, I slid right under the bus.... good times, good times), oh and perhaps the most classic accessory of the 1980's the really long set of beads that you would tie in a knot.  My hair was carefully crafted to look like I was standing in a wind tunnel.  It took lots of hairspray to look that good.  My sister had wall bangs, she would style her bangs so that they stood right up, like a wall.  No, the style of the 80's I will concede was interesting, but not really best of all time.

    For what ever reason yesterday I was telling Gracie how different the music videos of the 80's were.  They were better, so much better than today.  You know that you are getting old when you make claims like that.  Back in the 80's Music videos were new.  Before the advent of the music video bands could afford to be ugly, they could just put a picture of a car or something on the front of their albums.  With the new music videos bands had to be attractive, had to be cleaver if they wanted to survive.  The old music videos, the originals told a story, like a little mini movie.  There were no scantily clad women, well o.k. maybe in the hair band videos.
     I could not believe it, I don't know what happened, but Grace was actually interested in what I had to say.  There was not one single roll of the eye... I must write this down somewhere.  I told her that after the other kids were in bed I would "school" her in the difference between today's videos and the originals.

    

    Another shocking moment, I had just come downstairs from tucking all the little guys in, and Grace was sitting at the computer.  "Remember you were going to show me some of those old music videos?"  I am not sure if my face betrayed my utter shock, but I tried to play it cool.  This was my chance, don't blow it, don't blow it, you're going to be the cool Mom.  My first selection was AHA's Classic video, the one that introduced North America to this Swedish (at least I think they were Swedish, well they were all cute, that much I do remember).  Next my beloved Duran Duran's "Hungry Like A Wolf", followed by Kate Bush's "Cloudbusting".  She enjoyed them, she actually enjoyed them.  She liked the music, she like the videos, we had her in the palm of our hands... that is until we showed her how we used to dance in the 80's.  Christopher by this point had found his way into the living room and was enjoying Grace's reaction to our generation's music.  He demonstrated the shuffle dance that all boys did.  You remember they would stand perfectly straight with this pained expression on their faces, hands tightly clasped to their sides, and then would just shuffle their feet back and forth, oh a true classic.  She thought that was funny... we still had her.  And then I had to do it, I had to loose her respect... I did my classic 80's dance.  You remember that classic 80's dance where you would basically bring your opposite elbow to the opposite knee, but with a little bop to it.  Oh it was a beauty, it was my signature move... it was also where I lost her.  She looked at me, "You guys danced weird."

    I learned a valuable lesson last night, first of all "I AM OLD", there is no pretending, it snuck up on me, but it's true.  Number two, every generation thinks that their music was the best (although ours actually was).  Number three, and the most important one here, no matter how hard you try, no matter how much it may look like you are succeeding, you will NEVER BE A COOL PARENT!

    I leave you with some hilarious 80's dance moves that I discovered on youtube, enjoy.