I know that will strike a long-forgotten chord with some of us. The whole shark-tooth thing got really popular after Jaws, but they were dangerous. Then again, no more dangerous than the crucifix necklaces that Madonna made popular.
Having sex on a waterbed is great fun when your joints burn evenly, not when your joints scream in pain when you try to get out of it. Having sex on a waterbed has great motion, unless your waterpill kicks in. Having sex on a waterbed was fun when I was young, but I prefer the ability to actually move about in bed without having to throw my body weight behind the move.
The 70s were a prime time for Gen Jones. The height of colourful fashion and lava lamps, psychedelic art and wallpaper, and god help us…mushrooms, which I love drawing to this day. Colourful, yes, but the fashions were not very flattering for many of us.
For girls, Twiggy still hung over our heads like an unhealthy beacon of the perfect figure. Bookend that with the spotlight that shone on anorexia in the early ’80s, and it’s no wonder, now that we’re the senior population, we see why we’ve had various self-confidence issues. Health programs and aerobic exercise shows (all that skintight material and leg warmers) became popular and put a tremendous amount of pressure on women.
Ah, fun times though. Movies with women taking lead roles in companies started many of us wanting corporate careers. Others, like the 1980 film Private Benjamin, spurred many of us to join the military for some silly reason. Goldie Hawn looked like she was having fun. Then we had Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter looking better in a bustier than we ever could. Not to mention the obsession some of us had with disco after Saturday Night Fever. Fun times.
All I know is that, as the child of parents of the Gold Watch Society, we grew up with boomer parents and leftover ideals of the perfect life, of the Victorian era that raised our parents. Is it any wonder we approach things with a bit of trepidation? The world shifted quickly once the sixties took hold. Moved faster than maybe some of us felt we could keep up. Every year some other thing made the popular kids popular. I was never able to tune into that.
Then again, maybe it was just being young. I believe we see our youth with very biased eyes when looking back. Not deliberate, but how else could we look at a scenario that had outcomes/consequences/results without those tinting the glasses? Whatever way I view those decades through whatever tint, there are some seriously cringy moments, but overall, we made it through and had some interesting times.
For the Audio Edition Click Here
2025 – jj thompson
LIFE on the HALF SHELL 