Don’t You (Forget About The 80s)
Watching the “Brats” documentary made me nostalgic. But not in the way you think.
We loved summer. Our friends would shout our names in the street and we’d throw open our windows, jump down the stairs, taking four a time, and we’d race out of the dark into the morning already thick with heat and sugar. Maybe we’d go to the pool or mess around the street or hop subway turnstiles or steal bags of potato chips. Or maybe we’d slip into movie theaters, feeling the cool air on our burned necks because who could afford air conditioning? Temperature control was a luxury. And we’d spread out on the plush seats with our stolen chips and sweat skimming down our backs. We’d pine for Jake, cheer for Ducky, or feel the blackness of Allison in The Breakfast Club was the color of our fragile, desperate hearts.
And then James Spader would smoke a cigarette and we wondered why — as kids in the 80s living in Brooklyn — everyone on screen was always white. Was Ohio this way? Illinois? States we’d heard of, had learned in school, but couldn’t imagine their shape beyond the fresh-faced teens on celluloid. But those thoughts were brief back then because we took what we could get.
Although the kids on screen didn’t look like us, they felt like us. They felt deeply, wholly, and completely. We’d never saw…
