Okay, here’s the premise: While shopping for light bulbs at Dollar General you slip through a time portal and wind up back in 1980. You’ve got money in your pocket and a magic credit card.
Dollar General apologizes for the mix-up through their time travelling rep, but lets you know they will be unable to fix it for a month. Meanwhile, they give you cash and the use of an apartment and a high limit credit card.
Now, you quickly find that this is the same 1983 as we had before with one exception: neither you nor your immediate family ever existed and it’s in a different dimension, therefore you can’t contact yourself to say “Don’t date ____” or “Tell Grandma not to go on that bungee jump” or whatever. Also it’s pointless trying to buy yourself $5000 worth of Microsoft stock or whatever since you won’t be able to enjoy the fortune it will bring you when you get back to your time and dimension, and the Cassandra thing is apt of nobody believing you if you try to tell the future.
So, being that it’s 1980 and it’s essentially a layover where you can’t change anything:
1- What do you think will drive you battiest about then as opposed to now (particularly if you, like me, are old enough to remember that time well)?
2- What do you think you would most enjoy during your one month layover?
I think the Internet would drive me nuttiest of course, especially when I had one of those “Who was the actor in that movie…” or “What’s the population of Guam?” queries that would require actually going to a library and looking it up things. There’s enough stuff that hasn’t changed (cars still drive pretty much the sam, food tastes the same, etc.) that much wouldn’t seem appreciably different. Having to remember how to turn a dial on a TV set might take some getting used to, or hunting a pay phone, but not so much.
Things I’d most enjoy- hmmm. Lots of merchandise comes to mind- the STAR WARS/STAR TREK:TMP stuff on the market, going into a record store (I get nostalgic for them somehow) or watching the news and talk shows and remembering who all was still alive (the entire Rat Pack, Lucy & Desi, Lennon, etc.) and seeing TV shows and commercials I haven’t thought about in 25 years.
I was one at the time so I don’t remember much and won’t get all nostalgic for it.
I don’t really know what, if anything, I would love about the time but I do remember growing up in the eighties and how smoking was everywhere. Having to deal with that again would be pretty annoying.
There were ashtrays in doctor’s offices, grocery stores, hospital rooms, and most offices. I posted a long story on here once about how in 1982 my mother almost boycotted my brother’s wedding because the old house/restaurant where he held the reception was non-smoking, which was unheard of at the time.
I would be going to a lot of concerts. As many as possible. My first concerts were in 1983. I would go catch Bruce, The Who, The Dead and everyone else that I could. If I am there on July 4th I would catch the Yankee game at the stadium.
For the bad side, I would miss my wife and my kids. I am trying to think of anything else that would actually annoy me.
Sampiro, John Lennon was shot dead December 8, 1980. I’ll never forget that night and the following weak. It was a very sad time. No chance of seeing him in 1983.
Two words: Commodore 64. That was the greatest Christmas present of my life that I received around that time. I think Compuserve and AOL even existed then so I could use them as a pitiful primitive internet albeit at hundreds of dollars a month for what I would need it for.
The food and drink actually sucked badly in 1983. It wouldn’t be until the 1990’s that you could get decent foreign food, wine, and beer in much of the U.S. That was the era of fake foreign food, wine over ice (That’s nice!), and Miller Lite versus Bud. That isn’t a horrible problem though and I did make it through just fine the first time around.
I would revel in regained freedoms like carrying exotic weapons like Swiss Army Knives freely even in airports as well as lighting off big ass fireworks. In my native Louisiana, you could do damn near anything like drink and drive (with a 12 pack right next to you) as long as you weren’t truly drunk (Can you name the state you are in sir? Great, have a good day.) I could make good use of explosives for however long my layover is.
Women tended to carry a nice bush around back then too. I always thought that I would like a nicely trimmed mound and, I guess I do, but a straight out hair-pie could offer some welcome nostalgic value. The (head) hair would be a big turnoff though. Women that smelled just like they came off a perm assembly line would remind me too much of my mother. I think I could deal with legwarmers though as well as aerobics classes.
Depending on what month it was, I could go and hit two important concerts that I stupidly missed. The Talking Head’s Stop Making Sense tour and the US festival. Others that I would’ve like to hit U2’s War tour and Prince’s 1999 tour. Would I be 25 again? Maybe I’d hang out in NYC at CBGB.
Hell, I’d probably bag the apartment and go traveling around the world and hit places that I knew would get fucked up or not possible to go to. I guess I wouldn’t be able to go overland from China through the Middle East to Europe in a month, maybe I could get a year! But you could probably go to Bagdhad, Beirut (don’t call me on this, I can’t remember exactly what was going on in 1983) and a host of other bitchin’ places much safer than today.
Maybe I’d just pick up a Land Cruiser and start driving down to Panama. I can’t remember which Central American nations were dangerous that year (El Salvador and Panama?), but all of them would be much more pristine.
There wasn’t much of a chance of getting AIDS, so I guess screwing around without a condom would be pretty delightful. I guess the magic credit card probably won’t get me laid any more often though.
And other than the internet, email and cell phones, I’m not sure what I’d miss.
If it’s only a month, I can’t see any downside at all. I could easily spend a month in 1983 at the mall, buying 500 pairs of Candies, probably. I would also be sure to check out all the NYC clubs I missed, like the Saint and Studio and Danceteria.
TV would probably annoy me after the first rush of nostalgia – how often can you watch The A-Team? But, then the annoyance would be over when I realized I could watch music videos on MTV. All day even!
Damn Sampiro, now I’m depressed that I can’t go on vacation to 1983 for a month.
I would make it my mission in life to be the one to introduce The Pogues to all of my friends, even thought they weren’t big in '83.
I would go to Boston and New York to visit every used book store I could find. Those are the only things I miss from those days.
I’d have to agree with everyone who’s said that Reagan in the White House and no Internet would suck the hardest. Come to think of it, I can’t find any reason to go back to '83. Can’t I go back to sometime during the 90’s when the tech boom started to really kick in? The early 80’s kind of sucked.
I’d be able to watch the people I went to university with… uh, go to university.
Lessee… 1981. The first video-arcade boom. Syntho-pop. Narrow ties. I discover computers (actual sketch from 1981 when I was in first year and had to take a computer class. I was hooked. And doomed. Doomed, I tell you!)
I remember being in South Campus Hall at Waterloo looking in the store at computer magazines and pining for a Commodore 64 and being broke. This would have been late 1982 at the latest. The computer was $400, the monitor was $400, and the disk drive was $800, or some extreme amount like that.
Traffic wouldn’t be as bad, and there would be vast green fields where suburbs now stand. On the other hand, half the buildings and restaurants I know would be missing. Nobody would have heard of global warming. The US would still be the good guys and the Russians would still be the really evil guys.
Oh yeah. The music.
Was 1981 pre-AIDS?
Are we allowed to carry things with us? Cause if so, I’d have my laptop with me and be able to show the guys at Waterloo a 21st-century Apple. After getting them drunk so they think it’s a dream. (“It’s Unix, man!” “But it’s an Apple!” “What did he just say about the Berlin Wall?”)
I’d probably miss cell phones more than I’d miss internet (especially work email!) “What? I have to call a place and hope the person I want to speak to is there? What sort of world is this???”
I would send OJ Simpson’s ex-wife a letter. A series of letters. To spare her, and the nation, the horror that awaits.
55mph speed limit would suck. So would the quality of car.
I wasn’t in the arena at that time, but it seemed an easier time to get laid. With my unlimited account provided for by the good people at Dollar General, I’d probably test that hypothesis. (Then again, I’m not in the arena now so I don’t know how the internet has changed hooking up. Maybe it is easier now).
