Like...totally rad, dude!

I miss the 80’s.  Sad, I know.  Great music.  Great….um…fashion.  OK, so the fashion was weird, but it was cool THEN!  I wonder who dreamed up some of that stuff?  “This sweater has lost its use, but the arms are still good…what EVER shall we do?  I KNOW!  We’ll cut them off and put them on our legs!”    And who thought the waistband of our jeans needed to come clear up to the wire on our bras?  It was COOL then, now they’re “Mom jeans”.  When did THAT happen?!? 

There is one fashion trend that I’m really hoping will never make a comeback and that’s the big hair.  The boys had it, the girls had it, everybody had big hair.  And the bigger the better!  Parted down the middle and feathered back, I don’t know how we could tell girls from guys – especially those “hair band” guys!

Remember the language?  Kids now say things like “epic”, “sick”, and “hot” for things that are amazing and acceptable.  In the fifties it was "cool" – that one seems to keep coming back around.  In the sixties it was "groovy" – I’ve heard that one a few times lately.  In the seventies it was "radical" – that’s been recycled too.  In the eighties it was "awesome", “choice”, and “gnarly”.  Dude.  Don’t forget the ‘Dude’.  How does that one not ever go away?  Please?  Even girls call each other “Dude”.  Emmy called me “Dude” once.  Once.

Personally, I had a lot of fun with the “Valley Girl” trend.  When I went into the military and was stationed in Sicily, we had a military radio station on the base and the DJ heard me launch into a Valley Girl shtick one night at the base club and asked me to “guest” on his show.  I did.  I was asked to do a spoof traffic report.  Picture a sort-of-snotty-sounding voice and the sound of a helicopter in the background.  It went something like this:  “Oh…my…gosh, gag me with a spoon?  There is a totally icky mess down there?  Some hoser totally like jack-knifed a truck full of like chickens?  Now there’s these like gnarly little feathers all over the place?  It’s so bogus, I’m SO SHUR!  Oh, but now like some dude is like havin’ a cow ‘cuz some of that chicken stuff is on his window?  It’s totally grody to the max.  But whatever!  So like tune in tomorrow for another tubular report on our radical roads?  This is like, Suzy Sunshine like reporting ‘n stuff!”

Nothing is more fun to me than launching into a whole Valley Girl routine when Emmy or her cousin start to sound like that.  It’s fun to mimic them.  Totally.