06/13/2026
One Friday night, I found myself sitting on patch of grass in my friend Kevin’s backyard. His parents were away for the weekend - and that was enough to get us in trouble.
Somebody had dragged a boom box outside, and Bryan Adams was playing just loud enough to annoy the neighbors without getting us busted. There was a group of about ten of us there that night, trying our hardest to act older than we really were.
I remember taking a sip from a red plastic cup, making a face because I hated the taste, then taking another sip anyway because everyone else seemed to know what they were doing.
By eleven o’clock, we were laughing at things that weren’t remotely funny, arguing about which bands were worth seeing in concert, and flirting our hardest with people we swore we weren't interested in.
For the first time in my life, I felt like I was standing right on the edge of adulthood. (That ended a bit later, when I puked my guts out...and the girl I liked witnessed it.)
That was the thing about growing up in the 80s.
We made plenty of bad decisions.
We piled too many people into cars. We stayed out later than we were supposed to. We trusted friends who swore they knew what they were doing even when they clearly didn’t.
What makes this even greater is that none of it was documented. There were no phones coming out every five minutes. No videos. No screenshots. No permanent record waiting to pop up years later.
If somebody did something ridiculous, only the people standing there knew about it.
Today, one questionable moment can end up online before the night is even over. Back then, our mistakes had the decency to stay local. They faded into campfire stories, high school reunions, and the occasional “Remember when Mike thought he could jump that fence?”
The truth is, we weren’t smarter than kids today.
We were just luckier.
Luckier to grow up in a time when life was experienced instead of documented. When every embarrassing moment wasn’t stored forever. When freedom came with a little mystery and a lot of trust.
Somehow we survived the 80s.
Mostly because there’s no video evidence.
