Flashback Friday: 1987

Ah, Friday!  I'm so glad to see you.  Despite only working three days this week I still felt like the week dragged!  Have you ever noticed that?  Short weeks seem even longer than regular ones?  Weird.

Anywho, I thought it would be fun to have a flashback today, since you know I love those.

The Year Is 1987.

I was 12 years old, had a bad haircut, wore bad clothes, and listened to bad music.  But hey, it was the 80's, yo; didn't we all?  Don't take my word for it - behold the photographic evidence!

I know I was awesome.  Don't be hatin'.

Let's see.  I was in 7th grade.  My favorite band was - surprise! - Duran Duran, but mostly because my sister liked them first.  This was about two years before I would enter my emo dark period when I wore all black every day, listened to The Cure, and wrote angst-filled letters to Sinead O'Connor and Seventeen magazine about how no one understood me.  True story.  At this age, I was still innocent enough to like posters of animals and episodes of You Can't Do That On Television.

Oh, Alasdair... how I hearted you.  You too, Alanis Morissette.

Every week my dad would take us to the video store to rent VHS tapes.  Some of my favorites that year were:

This was the year that I had a big sleep-over and the main event was a screening of the brand-new hit movie, Dirty Dancing, which had just hit Pay-Per-View.  All of my giggling girlfriends were beside themselves with excitement at the prospect of watching this movie. We were glued to the screen, oohing and ahing over Patrick Swayze, wishing we were Baby.

Since we lived in the boondocks of northern Vermont, my parents had a satellite dish - the big 12 foot diameter kind, not the cute little Direct TV ones.  Anyone who has ever had a satellite dish will tell you that they're temperamental bastards, and that night as we all waited with baited breath to see if Baby would complete the much-anticipated lift in the final dance scene, a gust of wind blew the satellite dish off kilter and the screen went to static.  There was a chorus of groans and one girl shed actual tears.

As a 12 year old, I was certain that I would be doomed to be a social outcast thanks to this enormous faux pas, but somehow I muddled through.

Always an avid reader, my favorite author in 1987 was Stephen King.  The scanned photo above can't be enlarged, but I would bet dollars to donuts that the paperback on my nightstand was one of his books.  I distinctly remember buying Misery in hardcover that year.



This was also back in the day when MTV played actual music videos, so I'm 100% certain that this was my favorite music video that year:



Good times.

That was my walk down memory lane. See that? Flashbacks CAN be fun.

What were you doing back then?