1980s Memories From Our Visitors

Challenger Disaster Memories

Posted By Anon

The 80s and the Rubik Cube UK

Posted By John

My ZX Spectrum UK

Posted By Andy

Old Fashioned Pay Phones U.S.A.

Memory Posted By: Webmaster

A Few Worst Job Ever Memories

Memory Posted By: brickys mate Simon

Memory Posted By: Matthew Burton Taxi Driver

Memory Posted By: Steve Woolworths Shelf Stocker

Great Music Memories and everything else U.S.A.

Memory Posted By: Sharn

Back To The 80s United States

Memory Posted By: Ronnie

Pittsburg to Syracuse Looking For Work and Romance United States

Memory Posted By: Mark

thinking back to the 80s U.S.A.

Memory Posted By: Anonymous

Challenger Disaster Memories

Memory Posted By: Julie

Memory Posted By: Jane

The 80's was it only 30 years ago U.S.A.

Memory Posted By: Carl

Growing up in the 80s U.S.A.

Memory Posted By: Carli

Charles and Diana Marriage

Memory Posted By: Ann

Memory Posted By: Carol

Memory Posted By: kpcrispie

Growing up in the 80's in Chicago U.S.A.

Memory Posted By: Jenna

Teaching My curse and my Comfort USA

Memory Posted By: Name Withheld

Our Changing World and Childhood in the 80's U.S.A.

Memory Posted By: Jeremy

8 tracks from the 80s U.S.A.

Memory Posted By: J.A.B.'s Freelance World

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles U.S.A.

Memory Posted By: Anthony

It’s been a couple of decades or so since the glory days of the 1980s and the lunchbox, mass marketed commercialism of Saturday Morning Cartoons. I remember it as fondly as any child of that almost forgotten era. Thankfully, it’s impossible to stretch more than 20 years away from any given pop culture bookmark without bounding back to it and re-igniting fervor for something that supposedly died off half a generation ago. With that resurgence, I’m forced to remember back to the glory days of my childhood and the power of certain commercially viable franchises over me and my parents’ almighty dollar (hint: they had a lot of power).

The foremost and longest lasting of those was that of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I don’t remember when the Turtles first showed up. I’m sure it was before I was old enough to watch TV, but as early as I can remember, they were there, all four of them, named after artists I wouldn’t care to learn about for at least another 10 years. I watched them fervently, detailing their exploits in the sewers of Manhattan. The kitsch of it all was lost on me; I was aware of no tongue in cheek. The Turtles were genuinely awesome in my book and everything about them was important to me and my childhood, for at least five years.

My earliest memory of such intense idolatry of the Ninja Turtles was when I was six years old and my mother made for me and my brother full sized Ninja Turtles costumes, zipped up in the back, our heads poking out of beneath the ample noses. I could barely walk in that thing, waddling around the block on Halloween begging for candy. To this day, that Halloween sticks out in my memory as the biggest and most productive of any I ever had.

It was apparently the year of the turtle, because parents everywhere were fawning over the hand crafted mastery my mother had managed of cartoon characters their children were in love with. I loved that costume though, and an hour later, I found myself standing on stage at my elementary school with a plastic trophy and the applause of my peers as I took home best costume at the haunted house that year. It wasn’t the start of it, but those costumes sure sparked the eventual explosion of paraphernalia that would cover every single inch of my bedroom by the time I was ten years old. I remember the day after Halloween I started writing my Christmas list, and it could just as easily have been a photocopy of a Ninja turtles comic book, because there was no single thing on that list that did not include some combination of mutant turtles, ninja rats, or vehicles with ninja turtles and a mutant rat. I loved that show and made sure everyone who ever considered buying me gifts knew it. The following year came my birthday, and while the Christmas tree was a cesspool of abnormal amphibians, the rest of the house was still a cheery, red and green salute to all things winter and holiday related. My birthday however was a time for me to demand the most outlandish, ridiculous concoctions I could dream up, because at the age of 7, parents have a habit of indulging those numerous quandaries with relish, almost enjoying them more than the child.

So it was that my seventh birthday turned into an explosion of green, nearly everything we owned covered in something resembling a turtle or the shell of a turtle, or just plain green of a turtle. My birthday cake was a giant turtle, my party favors were all turtles, and I even took to calling everyone who arrived a different character from the turtles show. I woke up at seven in the morning that fine June morning and watched anxiously as every corner of our house was turned into a giant sewer (the good, turtle infested kind) and guests started arriving and marveling at how cool I was.

I cannot remember a single person who showed up that day. I have two pictures, one of my mother and grandmother making the cake and one of me eating it, and every seven year old face in those photos is as foreign to me as the point of that show was then. I received a sketch book for that birthday and immediately filled it with a dozen drawings of ninja turtles and my presents. I received a squirt gun from a neighbor, a really nice one, the kind kids go nuts for especially in late June, but I tossed it aside and started playing with my brand new parachuting action Donatello toy.

It’s not that I wish I could remember my friends better or that I regret spending so much time and energy on a ridiculous children’s cartoon. I just wish I’d spent more time observing the rest of the world. My childhood consists mainly of cartoon shows and movies I watched 43 times. At least I finally get the joke that is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

My First Dirt Bike U.S.A.

Memory Posted By: Anthony

My father was a lot of things to me over the years. The ambiguity of that statement can be taken for whatever its worth, good or bad, but I try my hardest to retain a certain reflective approach to the relationship we had over the years, if for nothing else but to make sure I don’t cast him out of my life as it would be entirely too easy to do.

But this isn’t about how bad or non-existent of a father he was, it’s about the few varied things I learned from him and how important they still are to me today, as reminders of certain times in life when I wasn’t quite so cynical and was still willing to try dangerous new things (however reluctantly).

Most young boys thrive on the chance to strap themselves to something fast and dangerous and see what happens. My brother was one of those kids, constantly throwing himself headlong into the dumbest possible situations to see just how far he could go before he broke something. As the elder of the two, I was privy to getting a jump start on all of these dangerous endeavors and sharing my experiences with him.

Unfortunately, I was not so excited to put myself in danger as my brother, nor for that matter my father. For his part, my father was something of a risk taker himself. He’d grown up around heavy machinery, his father an electrician and a well driller, his own finger missing at the knuckle from a mishap in his youth. He is an auto mechanic and has been one for most of his adult life. However, at the time in which I was deemed old enough to risk my body on a regular basis, he was drilling wells himself in a small town about two hours south of Seattle.

He grew up however and won trophies in the sport of dirt bike riding and even though a particularly painful crash that had seen his back crushed and nearly broken in one race, he still rode and built bikes as a hobby and eventually enlisted his sons into the fold.

As the eldest, I was first on deck, and the particular memory I’m channeling places me in the midst of a muddy field, in the middle of July. It had been raining for at least a week and postponing our first ever riding trip. We’d gone with my best friend at the time’s father, someone else my dad had roped into the hobby, and my best friend, a confidant in the art of silence and relaxed geekdom. Standing there, as my father handed me piece after piece of motorcycle protective gear, the pile of pads, cages, and helmet my mother had so fervently contributed to the endeavor, I remember thinking to myself, “how long exactly is this going to take?”

Rather than complain though, I put the gear on, all of it at least two sizes too big, negating a good portion of its purpose. However, with that gear firmly in place, I was able to approach the bike sitting in front of me with some measure of confidence, sure at least that I wouldn’t die in my first outing, if only because if I fell, I would probably roll down the rest of the hill.

Without a single inch of me unprotected, and almost two inches of heel on boots that weighed as much as the bike on which I was trying to sit, I kicked the machine into gear. It didn’t turn at first, and with the negated panic that tends to build in the mind of an eight year old who is about to do something he really doesn’t want to do, I jumped off, finally willing myself to back away and protest the danger of my endeavor.

My father scowled at me and gruffly adjusted the choke, letting more gas into the engine and starting the bike once to test it. The bike itself, a bright yellow, freshly cleaned (again, courtesy of my mother) Yamaha YZ 80 was twice as intimidating with the smoke pouring from its exhaust. I couldn’t help but quiver in fear.

However, for any men reading this, it’s common knowledge that such cowardly display in the presence of three other males who you respect is the quickest way to become a pariah for life, always the one who wouldn’t ride the bike. So, I forced a bit of strength into my weighted ankles and trudged through the mud back to the now running bike, barking and spitting eagerly, waiting for me to hop on and let her go.

Awkwardly I fingered the clutch and toed the gear shift. My father had gone over the mechanics repeatedly the night before and I had committed to memory all the working parts of the machine, in hopes that an extra bit of knowledge might prevent the inevitable fiery death which I foresaw every time I laid eyes upon the cozy little Yamaha.

And so I slipped the clutch, hit the throttle, and shifted into first gear. Lurching free of the mud shackles and taking to the field with revelry. Only after I landed face first in a particularly delicious pit of mud did I realize that the bike had only moved a couple of feet and that the rest of my motion was directly related to my flying over the handle bars.

The rest of the day was spent making fun of my cowardly approach and dimwitted release of the bars as I flew forward. No one mentioned that I eventually got the bike in gear and road the course as well as my friend if not better. No, it was the fall, and for the next three years, every outing we took with that smarmy yellow Yamaha was filled with mentions of my fall. I never really got that good on the bike. I was a little to timid for that kind of attention, but I wasn’t an eight year old in the mud. However, if you were to ask my father about me and dirt bike riding, the first story he’d tell you starts with, “he sure liked the taste of mud”.