I was only around for little bits of the 80's, but I remember some great memories.
1) Nintendo. My brother and I got our Nintendo when I was 4 or 5, which means we didn't get it until the early 90s. We rocked that thing out until it broke, however (it actually lasted longer than our SNES) and I just replaced it with a toploader. I had, until about 3 weeks ago, a working Power Pad, but then I left it in the garage and it was eaten by mice :-(. When we were kids, though, we would stay up and play video games all night when my parents had to work late (which was usually till 3 or 4 in the morning)
2) Vinyl and Cassette tapes. In my house, we had 3 turntables, and 2 of them were off-limits. I had vinyl, but I was only allowed to use my turntable (which I bought at a pawn shop). My stylus broke easily, and the things were pretty expensive. If I really wanted to listen to my music collection when I was walking around, I had to copy my records onto a cassette tape and listen to it on an enormous Walkman. It ate tapes, used batteries like mad, and all my headphones looked dorky as hell. There was no looking cool with that thing on. That one actually sort of floors me, because the Walkman was not a status symbol like the iPod. People didn't feel the need to listen to their music all the time.
3) Betamax. There's not too much to be said about Beta and VHS, but I remember buying, like, 150 movies for $10 from a video store after they went out of business because they didn't want to migrate over to VHS. That was how I got exposed to some great late 80's, early 90's movies like Cloak and Dagger. My parents got rid of the Beta collection before I was able to move out with them, but that's okay - it's so hard to find working Betamaxes people are willing to part with.
4) "Boys will be Boys". When I was a kid, my brother and our next door neighbor thought it would be funny to sit at the park and peg people with a BB gun as they walked past. My cousin did the same thing a month ago and was arrested, criminally charged, and expelled from school. I'm not saying he shouldn't have been punished, but seeing the difference between those 15-16 years is ridiculous. The cultural views regarding actual violence, simulated violence, and "pranks" have changed so much because so many are afraid that every immature kid will be the next Columbine shooter.
