I was born January 3rd, 1981.
Things I remember:
TV Shows
He-man - I’d watch this after school everyday. I had several of the action figures, and probably still do somewhere. (They’re probably in poor condition, however.)
TMNT - Loved loved loved these guys. I still have dozens of the action figures, many in very good condition and with all their original weapons. I recall playing the TMNT game on the NES. The underwater level gave me fits. I remember there was one jump that was almost impossible in another level. I once, ONCE, made it to the end boss, but then promptly died. Hard game.
Square One - MathNet was brilliant. And I still remember “Oops is brought to you by erasers. Don’t make a mistake without one.”
Pirates of Dark Water - A regretably short-lived cartoon. The bird thing always made me laugh, because at this point in life “minga melons” made me thing perverse things.
GlowBugs - There was a cartoon, although I don’t think it was anything more than a one-shot “special” designed to sell toys. For all I know, we still have it on VHS in a box somewhere.
Flight of Dragons - I watched this on TV sometime in the 80’s. It was the very first thing we recorded on our VCR. Me and my siblings were very, very quiet, which made our parents suspicious. They asked what was up, and we said we were being quiet because we didn’t want the VCR to record our voices. 
Dino-Riders - Another short-lived cartoon, primarily existing to sell toys. I loved those toys. I was a little boy - of course I liked dinosaur toys. And dinosaur toys with mounted guns and lasers were even better.
Denver the Last Dinosaur - If I saw this cartoon again, I’d probably think it sucks. But at the time, well, like I said. Young boys love dinosaurs. And I’d like to take this opportunity to appologize to everyone whose ankles I bit while pretending to be a tyrranosaurus rex. I will not, however, appologize to my brother for bashing his head against mine while pretending to be a pachycephalosaurus. (If I’ve spelled that correctly, it’s by accident.)
WWF Wrestling - The Rockers (Shawn Michaels and Marty Jennety) were the best tag team ever, although the Superpowers (Macho Man Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan) were damned close. I cried when Earthquake “killed” Jake the Snake Robert’s snake. ( :rolleyes: at myself ) One time my dad tried to convince me Hulk Hogan used steriods. My mom made him stop after I got very, very upset at him.
Channel One News - We were forced to watch this in school most mornings. I hated it. It was so bad they even had Carrot Top as a guest one day. The only thing amusing was how Lisa Ling and the others would stay safe in the Haciena while Anderson Cooper would be reporting live from some place where people were shooting at him. I could tell that he was the only one who had any journalistic talent whatsoever.
Toys
NES - My family got one, strangely, on Valentine’s Day. I don’t remember the year, but it was well after damn near everyone else already had one. My brother lied to me about having beat Super Mario before me. Dad actually tried Duck Hunt, but stopped when he realized you couldn’t shoot the annoying dog. Super Mario 3 was the best game, ever. Still is. Unless my memory errs, it takes 20 fireballs but only 4 hammers to kill Bowser. (But just TRY aiming the hammers right. Gah!)
Slap bracelets - Nobody had ever heard of them, then everybody had them, the local news did a segment on their popularity, then suddenly they were gone. Poof. My first introduction to the notion of a “fad”.
Nerf toys - I never had any, but of course I wanted them. I don’t even know if they still make them, but their legacy lives on in gamer terminology. To “nerf” something is to render it as harmless as a foam arrow.
Arcades - The local Skill Mill was always full of kids playing the latest, greatest games. Street Fighter, Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, etc. Almost dead now, though.
Our first computer - I never realized it until years later, but my dad was a geek. He somehow convinced mom that a computer was just what we needed to get our finances in order. Of course, it set back our finances somewhere around $2,000, I think. It was a Franklin. It had no harddrive. It had two 5.25 floppy drives, which made the little grunting noises that floppy drives make. On 5.25 floppies, we had DOS 3.22. I still have the manual. We also, for some reason, had a copy of Novell Netware 2.0. I wish I still had that. I’d frame it. My brother had a floppy with Frogger. I had one with Lunar Lander and a text-based space adventure game. My older sis had Mrs. Pacman. At school, the only computers were Macintoshes, or Apple IIs. I played Oregon Trail, and started a trend to see how quickly you could kill your entire party. I would have held the record, except for that damned Indian who found me food! (And on the subject of 80’s popculture and computers, I still haven’t seen that famous Apple Macintosh ad.)
Events
Berlin Wall - I remember hearing about the wall coming down, and only halfway understood what the significance was. I remember thinking that people who had what I would now call a “Cold War mindset” were silly and paranoid. Only later did I realize that for quite some time people really had worried about the Russians bombing us. To me, such a thing was a B-rate movie plot.
Gulf War I - I was sick with the flu when the war began, and I stayed up most of the night with my mom watching news coverage. I really didn’t have any opinion on the matter other than, “This is obviously important, and I should pay attention.” I remember Gulf War trading cards, featuring weapons and people.
Challenger - I don’t remember this happening, but I do remember several mentions of it from people and on the news in memorial a year or two later.
Internet - I can’t really place an exact date on this, so I don’t know if it counts as an “event”. However, I do recall in the early 90’s how there was this hubbub over something called the “Information Superhighway”. Eventually some rich friends of mine showed me the Internet. And I was never the same after. They amazed me with their 28.8 modem. I was gobsmacked at the idea adventuring in a MUD with others online. Chat rooms were the coolest thing ever, except for webpages and the magic way they worked. (It wasn’t until a few yeras later that I learned bits of HTML.) My friends told me they could find anything online. I asked them to find information on the mating habits of garden snails. Five minutes later I realized that people will make webpages about anything, a lesson which I have yet to see proven wrong. I know that BBSs and the like existed long before the Internet proper came into being, but when it hit the mainstream it hit the mainstream in a big way.
Things I Took For Granted (added here in order to shock the old people )
The Moon - People had been on the moon several times and had been in space countless times. This was normal, and very unamazing. Seeing a shuttle launch in person would have been cool, but on TV was pointless. It happens all the time, right?
Cold War - The Russians were only enemies in movies. In real life, one boring old guy on TV talked about another boring old guy on TV and shook hands or something and the old people in real life thought it was amazing. To me, Russians were no different from any other foreign people. They talked funny and had strange customs but were mostly harmless.
Computers - I used computers throught nearly all of my schooling, from about 4th or 5th grade on up. I think my generation has a certain basic familiarity and comfort level with computers that many in older generations do not.
