I love the 80’s with my decrepit, barely beating 37 year-old heart.

Last night was a much needed girliefest with three dear childhood friends turned adult friends. The pinnacle of the evening of the was a trip back to Senior year through the magic of videotape.

A little perspective on 1986: Iran-Contra. Challenger explosion. Tommy Lee and Heather. Madonna and Sean. Mrs. Garrett. Ferris Bueller. A hot heterosexual named George Michael goes solo, a respected young actor named Tom Cruise is on “marriage” #1, and a black singer named Michael Jackson has a nose. To be honest, ’86 doesn’t seem like quite so long ago to me until I determine that Lindsay Lohan and the Olsen Twins were born that year. (I imagine a teeny little Mary-Kate fetus wondering, “does this placenta make me look fat?”)

Over the years, I’ve had this nagging fear that I bounced through the halls of my high school with a poofy assymetrical haircut, fat eyebrows, and a Flashdance: What a Feeling ripped sweatshirt in every color. Last night it was confirmed when we hit Play on the VCR and watched our senior dance show in jumpy, staticky technicolor. No straw hats or sparkly suspenders here, this was a very seeeeeeerious performance of student-choreographed modern dahhhhhnce. And aside from the hair, we weren’t half bad.

Which means there was still quite a bit of bad.

The truly heinous dances, we fast-forwarded through (take that, you talentless sophmores! We still control you!) until we came to my high school boyfriend in the most pretentious and unwatchable duet ever performed. Spotlight up. Two people. Earnest, faraway looks on their faces. Cue music. To the tune of…nothing–there was no discernable melody in the narcolepsy-curing piano piece they selected–he makes a shape with his arms, she makes a shape with her arms. He makes a shape with his body, she does a handstand. They make a shape together. Now hold it…hold it….and repeat. For six minutes.

I went on birth control for this guy.

But the audience still “whoo!”-ed and “yeah!”-ed because that’s what you do when you’re in high school and your friends are on stage. And afterwards, if it’s 1986, you go out to your Datsun, put your $1.25 pack of Parliaments on the dash, turn on the radio and make out to Roxy Music, fully believing that this is how life will always be.

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