What it Felt Like to Be a High School Freshman in 1982

Today, I created three new recycling bags of packing paper looking for a photo of my brother and I with my grandparents. I won’t give any more away because I’ll use that photo one of these weeks. Speaking of packing paper… I unwound a huge taped-up wad of it to find a charging cord, a sticky-note pad, and a pen that doesn’t work. Government inefficiency strikes again when moving across the country.

Anyway, it’s photo (or make that Foto for Finish the Sentence Friday) share week and I want to tell you about what it felt like to be a high school freshman in 1982.

I was at a loss not being able to find that photo of my brother and I, but gave up and decided to organize some stuff for my desk. One of those items is an old, torn, small yellow envelope containing most of the IDs I’ve had including my first driver’s license (if it’s not legal to own old driver’s licenses, never mind, it must have been something else).

I snapped a photo of my high school ID, freshman year. Wow, was I young. It’s funny how you don’t feel much older each year – you’re still YOU and all that. Fatter and more wrinkled, but YOU, ya know?

What it Felt Like to Be a High School Freshman in 1982

Being a high school freshman in 1982 felt like freedom and growing up. We had no cell phones and had to call our parents from pay phones if we were going to be late for curfew.

We listened to music that my nine-year-old is familiar with because it’s on my phone. It includes Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger (on Tucker’s playlist for his birthday and epic watergun fight celebration), Joan Jett’s I Love Rock and Roll, and Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s Ebony and Ivory (that Eddie Murphy and somebody did a great parody of once for Saturday Night Live).

Preppy was in, and my friend Carol and I decorated our lockers in plaid shelf-paper and alligators. I played on the tennis and volleyball teams, and my hair was feathered from bang to shoulder. My hair got more poofy as the years went by.

MTV had only been out for a year, and they played music videos all day long.

Our landlines were attached to the wall with a cord, and call waiting was new enough that I could trick my friend Gillian into thinking her other line was ringing. I played her songs using an instruction book and different numbers on the keypad.

I had gigantic stereo speakers and record set in my room, and listened to music in the dark, staring up at my cluster of holiday lights.

It was a couple of years before I went to a laser show, but the years blend together, as memories of concerts and teen angst.

In 1982, we were wildly naive. We didn’t have our own YouTube Channel (my son’s). We didn’t have FaceBook.

Video games were only played at the mall using quarters unless you were like my friend Julie whose parents spoiled her with an Atari.

There were four channels on TV, and streaming was something that meant nothing, unless it maybe meant going rafting in the mountains.

We were afraid of windowless white vans, and took a buddy with us when wandering around the neighborhood after dark. We were allowed to wander the neighborhood after dark. At 13. It’s true. We babysat other kids, too. By ourselves. With no cell phones or Snapchat to amuse us. We had to work for that $2.00/hour.

Malls were cool, and the only place we had to buy jean jackets and shoes. Yup, that’s right. Being a high school freshman in 1982 meant NO Amazon Prime! In fact, Amazon wasn’t even founded for another 12 years.

In 1982, if we wanted to listen to music wandering around the neighborhood after dark, we had to buy a Walkman (more than $100 and we made $2/hour babysitting). Most of us were left with our thoughts to amuse us back then.

With no seatbelts, often.

Unless we could sing, but who sings in public? At least, if you did sing in public back then, nobody would film you from her iPhone because those didn’t exist either of course.

We were the first to play Trivial Pursuit back then because that’s when it was released. We loved it, even though it made us feel dumb, and we couldn’t cheat using Google… because – you guessed it – Google didn’t exist back then! If we wanted to know something, we had to ride our bikes (with no helmets) to the library and figure out the Dewey Decimal system to look it up.

Honestly, I love my technology today. I love being able to type my thoughts into this WordPress site, click “Publish” and interact with people all over the world with social media, blogging, all of it.

But also? I miss the simplicity of the 80’s. I think there’s something lost today in not letting our kids wander around after dark with no cell phones (and hellz no, I don’t do that either).

What do you miss about the 80’s if you’re old like I am?

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This has been a Finish the Sentence Friday post, where this week (week four) is “Share a photo foto, and the story behind it,” hosted by yours truly and my fabulous co-host Kenya Johnson of Sporadically Yours.