Happy Birthday to Me!!

Actually, my 39th birthday was yesterday - 05/19. Remember when you were little and you would do the math and figure out what year it would be when you turned 30 because 30 seemed "sooooo old?" Well, I was thinking about that yesterday and realized that I hit 30 in 1998! I remember being 12 and wondering how old I would be in the year 2000 because that seemed so far off. That was back in 1980. In the year 2000 I turned 32. Now, I'm approaching the big 4-0 with lightning speed, my kids are growing up right before my eyes, and I remember back when I was 12 thinking "20 years is a really long time from now. I wonder what life will be like then?" Well, life has changed tremendously since 1980. In 1980 we first got cable TV - we had like 30 channels, most of them movies, and music, in addition to our normal ABC, NBC, CBS and iPTV stations. I thought MTV was the greatest invention in the world and watched it continuously. TVs were your typical analog sets with an antenna on the roof of the house - if you had cable, you had a little box with a dial sitting on the top of the set. You still had to get up to change the channels. There were some remote controlled TV's but we didn't have one. I had a bike with a banana seat, but that year on my 12th birthday, Mom and Dad blindfolded me and led me outside to see my new red 10-speed with white curly handlebars!! I thought I was in heaven! There were no cell phones, so if I rode my bike to see my friend Tammy in Robins (took me about 20 minutes to get there by bike) Mom made me call to let her know that I got there OK. Instead of an i-Pod, I had a one speaker boom box that fit in a backpack on my back for portable tunes. There were no computers except at school, and those would only help you with math problems. There were no cable modems yet - you had to dial a number on a phone, and place the handset in a modem cradle for the computer to pick up the signal and do its thing - like I said - just math problems. Technology isn't the only thing that has changed...music too is different. We didn't hear rap in the 80s, we had "bubble-gum" pop, we had the "urban cowboy sound," and of course heavy metal was still popular. My favorites were early Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Rick Springfield, Prince, KISS, Motley Crue, anything really - I wasn't too picky. Interestingly enough, at that time, liking country music was not something to brag about, but I was truly a closet fan. I enjoyed Johnny Lee, Johnny Cash, and of course the "new" artists at the time, Randy Travis, George Strait and Reba. Fashion was parachute pants, lots of eye makeup, boots, really tight jeans that tapered at the ankle, leg warmers (thank you, Olivia Newton-John and Flashdance), headbands, and very very big hair. If it didn't take an entire can of hairspray in the morning to get ready for school, then my hair was not big enough. The cool cars were fast and loud - Camaro, Mustang, TransAm - and lots of time was spent at the roller skating rink perfecting our "moves."

Yes, time has really flown by fast. It amazes me how many of the things that I loved back then are popular again today - tight jeans are coming back, although you will not see them on this butt! The 80s sound is becoming a popular music trend again - hence the popularity of the new hit movie, "Music and Lyrics" with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. Hair is shorter and sleeker, unless its longer and fluffier, so I think the trend now is no trend at all. It is do-what-you-want with it! Cell phones, i-Pods, and PDA's are all the rage, and the price of gas is right around 3.25 per gallon now compared with about 1.00 per gallon in 1981 (although adjusted for inflation, the 3.25 is supposedly the same as the 1.00 back then. WHATEVER! It still spends the same!).

Next year, I'll turn 40. My husband smiles, my friends tell me to "watch out." Well, guys, just for future reference, I plan to be unreachable that day. No black balloons for me --

--I'm going bungee jumping.