**Don't Call Me "Generation X", Call Me A Child of the Eighties** By Bryant
Adkins, Originally Published in "The Reflector", January 20, 1995  
I am a child of the Eighties. That is what I prefer to be called. The nineties
can do without me. Grunge isn't here to stay, fashion is fickle and
"Generation X" is a myth created by some over-40 writer trying to figure out
why people wear flannel in the summer.  
  

  * When I got home from school, I played with my Atari 2600. I spent hours playing Pitfall or Combat or Breakout or Dodge'em Cars or Frogger. I never did beat Asteroids. 
  * Then I watched "Scooby Doo." Daphne was a Goddess, and I thought Shaggy was smoking something synthetic in the back of their psychedelic van. I hated Scrappy. 
  * I would sleep over at friends' houses on the weekends. 
  * We played army with G.I. Joe figures... 
  * and I'd set up galactic wars between the Autobots and Decepticons. 
  * We stayed up half the night throwing marshmallows and Velveeta at one another. 
  * We never beat the Rubik's Cube. 
  * I got up on Saturday mornings at 6 a.m. to watch bad Hanna-Barbera cartoons like "The Snorks," "Jabberjaw," "Captain Caveman," and "Space Ghost." 
  * In between I would watch "School House Rock." (Conjunction junction, what's your function?") 
  * On weeknights Daisy Duke was my future wife. I was going to own the General Lee and shoot dynamite arrows out the back. Why did they weld the doors shut? 
  * At the movies the Nerds got Revenge on the Alpha Betas by teaming up with the Omega Mus. I watched Indiana Jones save the Ark of the Covenant, and wondered what Yoda meant when he said, "No, there is another." 
  * Ronald Reagan was cool. 
  * Gorbachev was the guy who built a McDonald's in Moscow. 
  * My family took summer vacations to the Gulf of Mexico and collected "Muppet Movie" glasses along the way. (We had the whole set.) 
  * My brother and I fought in the back seat. At the hotel we found creative uses for Connect Four pieces like throwing them in that big air conditioning unit. 
  * I listened to John Cougar Mellencamp sing about Little Pink Houses for Jack and Diane. 
  * I was bewildered by Boy George and his colors of his dreams, red, gold, green. 
  * MTV played videos. 
  * Nickelodeon played "You Can't Do That on Television" and "Dangermouse" Cor! 
  * HBO showed Mike Tyson pummel everybody except Robin Givens, the bad actress from "Head of the Class" who took all Mike's cashflow. 
  * I drank Dr Pepper. 
  * "I'm a Pepper, you're a Pepper, wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?" 
  * Shasta was for losers. 
  * TAB was a laboratory accident. 
  * Capri Sun was a social statement. 
  * Orange juice wasn't just for breakfast anymore, and bacon had to move over for something meatier. 
  * My mom put a thousand Little Debbie Snack Cakes in my Charlie Brown lunch box, and filled my Snoopy Thermos with grape Kool-Aid. 
  * I would never eat the snack cakes, though. 
  * Did anyone? 
  * I got two thousand cheese and cracker snack packs, and I ate those. 
  * I went to school and had recess. I went to the same classes everyday. Some weird guy from the eighth grade always won the science fair with the working hydro-electric plant that leaked on my project about music and plants. 
  * They just loved Beethoven. 
  * Field day was bigger than Christmas, but it always managed to rain just enough to make everybody miserable before they fell over in the three-legged race. Where did all those panty hose come from? "Deck the Halls with Gasoline, fa la la la la la la la la," was just a song. Burping was cool. Rubber band fights were cooler. A substitute teacher was a baby sitter/marked woman. Nobody deserved that. 
  * I went to the Cub Scouts. 
  * I got my arrow-of-light, but never managed to win the Pinewood Derby. 
  * I got almost every skill award, but don't rememberever doing anything. 
  * The world stopped when the Challenger exploded. 
  * Did a teacher come in and tell your class? 
  * Half of your friends' parents got divorced. 
  * People did not just say no to drugs. 
  * AIDS started, but you knew more people who had a grandparent die from cancer. 
  * Somebody in your school died before they graduated. 
  * When you put all this stuff together, you have my childhood. If this stuff sounds familiar, then I bet you are one, too. 
  * We are children of the eighties. That is what I prefer "they" call it.