For me, the 1980s will always be a golden age, simply because I will always look back with a certain amount of nostalgia on the years of my childhood and early adulthood. My memories of growing up will always be intertwined with the sounds of Men at Work, Duran Duran, Madonna, and Michael Jackson, and the indelible images of Space Invaders, Pacman, Trivial Pursuit and yes, Ronald Reagan.
As the Reagan era started, I was just reaching an age where I was old enough to have political opinions, and I knew I didn't like him. I remember listening to the news reports of his calls for prayer in the schools and thinking that would be tantamount to the end of the world for me, a Jewish child. Some years later, in high school, I distinctly remember my real fear that Reagan's cowboy politics would get us involved in a nuclear war, and the end of the world for all of us. When the Iran-Contra scandal broke, I was gleeful. I listened raptly to the hearings for hours and prayed for impeachment. I was skeptical that the Soviet Union was the evil empire, but I was convinced that Reagan was an evil emperor.
The perspective of time (and George W. Bush) has taught me that there are worse things than Ronald Reagan -- thankfully it turned out he was all bark without much bite when it came to most of his social agenda. However, I remain no fan of the Gipper, who will always be associated in my mind (ironically, since he was, theoretically, against increased government spending) with a spiraling national debt, the rise of the fundamentalist Christian right, a low point in the history of stewardship of the environment, and a high point in the history of consumerism and capitalistic excess.
Thus, I'm having a really hard time dealing with the sainthood that is currently being bestowed on Reagan now that he is finally departed in body as well as in mind. I am still reeling with the shock (and a certain amount of stubborn denial) that the airport in our nation's capital was renamed for him, and the thought of replacing the image of FDR on the dime with that of Reagan makes me positively apoplectic. Now we are greeted with an unending stream of media coverage that borders on the reverential. Give me a break! Next thing you know, we'll hear more talk of adding him to Mount Rushmore (maybe as a replacement for Teddy, since his supporters seem to have it in for Roosevelts). As far as I'm concerned, the man was far more deserving of impeachment than Clinton ever was.
Most of the time I don't really think about how old I am. I just am. But every once in a while it really hits you. It is graduation season, which reminds me that it has now been 17 years since I graduated from high school. Only three more years until I hit the 20-year milestone. It is mind-blowing to me to realize that I am getting old enough to be reminiscing about things that happened twenty years ago and not be talking about childhood.
I was somewhat unusual as a child, I think, in that I didn't want to be older than I was. I never longed to be 16 so I could drive, or 18 so I could get into R-rated movies, or 21 so I could drink, or whatever. Not that I didn't appreciate these and other privileges (I was more the type that looked forward to being able to vote than drink, anyway), but I was happy to wait it out. I was glad not to have to worry about having to pay bills, and taxes, and all that stuff. I actually appreciated my childhood at the time. I'm not sure it really made any difference, though. I still got old.
So it turns out I'm not too great at this. Maybe I'm not as opinionated as I thought (big surprise to many who know me!), or maybe it's just that I know most of my opinions are too half-baked to be given the permanence of actual print, even if hardly anyone is actually reading this thing.
Well the good news is that a) the weather has stayed pleasantly cool, if excessively rainy for some tasts and b) my mother has adopted my yard, since she is losing hers when she and my dad move to a "twin home" later this month. To my great joy, she is overhauling the landscaping, mowing, and weeding. This should be leaving me more time for blogging, but it seems only to have increased my laziness, both mental and physical.