We didn’t worry about ingesting chemicals or eating processed foods. We just gobbled down whatever was tasty. If we wanted the news, we either tuned in to the local television network or we picked up a newspaper.

We didn’t have personal computers and smart phones. The closest thing to Twitter was the water cooler in your office or the jungle gym on your school’s playground. Yes, to discuss what was going on in the world, we actually had to talk to people in person. When we missed our favorite TV shows, we were just plain screwed. There was no Tivo, no Hulu, and no iTunes.

We didn’t have as much and didn’t know as much, which totally explains why looking back on the 80s, everything seems so innocent.

In the 80s…

Yes, life may have been simpler in the 80s but it wasn’t quite as convenient either. Things were weirdly and totally different. Want proof? You got it:

• In the 80s, Michael Jackson was a sex symbol.
• Bert and Ernie’s relationship was completely platonic.
• An egg represented your brain. A fried egg represented your brain on drugs.
• We knew all the words to the Oscar Meyer wiener commercials (Oh I wish I was an Oscar Meyer wiener).
• We turned up the collars on our blouses, jackets, and polo shirts.
• We were perpetually gagging on spoons.
• We learned grammar by watching Schoolhouse Rock.
• We wondered where the beef was.
• We toted around walkmans that weighed several pounds so we could listen to our favorite mix tapes on the go.
• David Hasselhoff was cool and drove one bad-ass, talking car.
• We wore leg warmers even if we weren’t dancers.
• A Commodore 64 was considered advanced technology.
• We wore three or more pairs of socks and bought shoes two sizes too large to accommodate them.
• Donkey Kong had such realistic graphics!
• Everybody had a keyboard (the music kind, not the computer kind).
• We honestly believed either Debbie Gibson or Tiffany would be the next big princess of pop.
• Atari was cutting edge in the 80s.
• People used typewriters.
• Everyone had big plans for listening to Prince’s “1999″ on the eve of the new millennium… in 10 or 20 years.
• You had to listen carefully to a song (over and over) and take notes in order to get all the lyrics.
• Every family had a station wagon.
• There were only two flavors of coffee: regular and decaffeinated.
• The movie TRON had the best special effects ever.
• Teenagers had keg parties when their parents were out of town. If nobody’s parents were out of town, they brought the keg out to some rural road.
• Everybody danced in the 80s.
• Pretty much everybody knew where the phrase “kiss mah grits” came from and they also knew what it meant.
• Luke and Laura’s wedding was just as important as any other wedding you were actually invited to.
• We wondered who shot J.R. (and everyone knew who J.R. was).
• Obtaining a Cabbage Patch Kid seemed like the most important goal in life.
• Being a Material Girl didn’t seem like a bad thing at all.
• Gummy bears were a strange, new candy.
• Everybody was reading Deenie by Judy Blume because there was supposedly swear words and sex in it!
• Reebok tennis shoes were super cool.
• There was no underlying meaning when someone suggested you drink a little Kool-Aid.
• Getting in and out of your car via the windows (rather than the doors) seemed like a good idea.
• Star Search seemed like a possible vehicle for launching your music career.
• We pegged and rolled our pant legs, and not because they were too wide or too long.
• “Psych” meant “just kidding” and had nothing to do with one’s mental state.
• We wore bright, florescent clothing and accessories with absolutely no shame.
• We tried desperately to master the moonwalk.
• We could remember listening to 8-track tapes and cassettes seemed state-of-the-art by comparison.
• It was assumed that people would be living on the moon and astronauts would have visited Mars by the year 2000.
• There was nothing chauvinistic about the fact that Smurfette was the only female Smurf.
• Every other word we said was “like,” “totally,” or “like totally.”
• In the 80s, punk rockers were shocking.
• We bought and used large quantities of Aqua-Net aerosol canned hairspray.
• We actually wanted our MTV because they actually played music videos.
• Guys who pierced their ears were either way cool and edgy, gay, or both.
• Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, owned at least one Rubik’s Cube.
• Rotary phones standard. Push-button phones were futuristic.
• Nobody could figure out how to program a VCR, so all the digital VCR clocks read 12:00 and flashed incessantly.
• You could wake up with bed-head and that was considered presentable.
• Ronald Regan was just an actor from the olden days.
• Ronald McDonald might actually make an appearance at your local McDonald’s.
• There were cartoons on TV that made getting up early on Saturday morning worthwhile.
• People still communicated by handwriting letters and putting them in the mail.
• Watching movies at home, whenever we wanted, was a novelty.
• If we wanted a song, we either tape-recorded it off the radio or we had to buy the whole album.
• It was cool to write all over your shoes (and some clothes) with magic marker.
• Only pirates and convicts had tattoos in the 80s.
• Nobody worried about the end of the world or taking care of the planet.
• To get money out of the bank, you had to walk in during business hours and sign your name on a withdrawal slip.
• If you placed a call to a company, a real, live human being would answer and they would actually help you.
• M&Ms melted in your mouth, not in your hands, and the green ones made you horny.
• The U.S. had a comprehensive space program and people cared about it.
• Pluto was still a planet.
• The U.S. still manufactured goods, like clothing, cars, electronics, and so on.
• Porky’s was like the dirtiest movie ever made.
• Mickey Roarke was a sex god.
• “Bad” sometimes meant “good.”
• Our lunchboxes featured our favorite TV characters.
• A valley girl was not a girl who lived in the valley — it was a way of life.

The 80s

Sometimes, it’s hard to believe how far we’ve come in just a few, short decades. We look back at the 80s and wonder how we got by without all the technology that we have today. We’re a little embarrassed about what we wore in the 80s and the things that impressed us back then seem absurd now. But it was the 80s — we didn’t know any better. And life was good.

Kids today don’t realize how over-the-top everything was in the 80s. One bracelet wasn’t enough – you had to have twenty of them lining your forearm. And a nice, sleek hairstyle was out of the question. You wanted your hair to reach the moon and spread all the way to China.

Everything was like that in the 80s – even the language. Did any other decade produce as much jargon as the 80s did? I think not. Even music and movies got bigger. There more 80s music genres than ever before and new breakthroughs in special effects took film making to new galaxies. It was wicked awesome.

The 80s: Big, Bold, and Bodacious

If it wasn’t big, chances are it wasn’t from the 80s. Everything was enormous. You went through a can of Aqua-Net a day trying to get your hair to be as big as possible. You scoured through the jewelry section in search of the boldest, most colorful earrings. And big wasn’t enough. No. You also had to have lots of everything. Lots of bracelets, jelly shoes, and legwarmers. Lots of mixed tapes. Lots of Cabbage Patch Kids. And lots of style.

Style in the 80s

Big and bold only scratches the surface when it comes to the styles that dominated the 80s. Yes, hair was big and so were earrings. But we even made our shoulders big with plump shoulder pads. Our shirts were enormous (you could NOT have your butt on display), and so were the belts that we wrapped around them. One belt would be four inches thick. Or we’d get a really long (big) belt and wrap it around twice. Or we’d simply use several skinny belts. Speaking of skinny, the guys loved skinny ties and had lots of them. Anything made of colorful plastic was fair game and we stuck that stuff in our hair (banana clips), on our clothes (broaches and pins), our faces (Ray-Bans), and on our feet (jelly shoes). Plus, we had to have three times as many shirts, socks, and accessories because everything had to be layered.

80s Jargon

We had so much stuff and it was so big that we needed a whole new language to describe the 80s and everything that we used, wore, and did during that bodacious decade. Rad. Awesome. Tubular. And these words simply didn’t capture the essence enough, so we tagged totally in front of every single adjective we uttered. It was totally rad, totally awesome, and totally tubular. But we got lazy, too. Sometimes we shortened our favorite word of the 80s. It was a total blast, a total mess, and we loved it so much that we made the Total 80s Remix.

80s Entertainment

Entertainment was as big as everything else. MTV gave us 24 hours of music videos and the new station was a wicked success. It made stars and kept us glued to the tube into the wee hours (you always just knew they were going to play your favorite Madonna video sometime in the next hour). One-hit wonders were all the rage and new genres like hip hop and new wave sprung up, giving birth to new subcultures. Filmmakers harnessed technology and brought us blockbusters like nothing we’d seen before: E.T., The Empire Strikes Back, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. We loved being entertained in the 80s.

The 80s Craze Lives On

Oh sure, when the nineties came along, it seemed like the 80s were dead. Gloom spread like a virus as grunge music took hold and dancing became passe. Solid Gold was gone and MTV slowly stepped away from music videos in favor of lame reality shows like The Real World and Road Rules.

But the 80s didn’t truly die. They just took a nap. Nowadays, you can look around and see a little bit of the 80s everywhere. Leggings are back and so is the layered look. The superhero movie is bigger than ever and so are the special effects that keep us tromping off to the movie theaters. Listen closely and you’ll still hear mutterings of “totally awesome,” and “that’s rad.” And even music today is borrowing riffs and covers from the beloved 80s.

One generation gave us flappers. Another gave us the poodle skirts. Then, we had the hippies. The 80s gave us so much, and all of it was big, bold, and bodacious, that we can’t even sum it up with a single word or phrase. That’s why we simply call it the 80s.