It was the decade of decadence. It was about glitz and glamour as well as baubles, bangles, and beads.

Everyone loved Luke and Laura in the afternoon. Lady Diane became the People's Princess when she married Prince Charles. Nighttime soaps like Dallas and Dynasty ruled the airwaves. President Ronald Reagan ruled the United States. Tom Cruise felt the need for speed. Michael Milliken was the Junk Bond King. Gordon Gekko taught Wall Street whiz kids that greed was good. Material Girl Madonna made her musical debut.

What decade was it?

We can only be talking about that terrific time period - the excellent eighties.

Here are twenty-one ways for you to verify that you belong to (or belong in) the 1980's.


1. Breakdancing on the sidewalk looked like fun. Now it just looks like you might break something.

2. You can still recite dialogue from any movie starring Molly Ringwald.

3. "Cell phones" meant the telephone people used when they got their "one phone call" in jail.

4. You had at least one of the following: a Cabbage Patch Kid, He-Man action figures, a Rubik's Cube, or something with a Pac-Man logo on it.

5. You remember a lot of headlines about the Human Genome Project, which was a complete mapping of human DNA. You also remember how this was supposed to lead to the eradication of disease.

6. You remember the day that thousands of radio stations across the world played "We Are The World" at the exact same time. (Now, you're singing it!)

7. Your first album was a vinyl 33 and you laughed at your parents because they wanted to play 45's and 8-track tapes.

8. You know who Oliver North is and why he was in the news.

9. Someone on your street or neighborhood sent his or her life savings to a later discredited televangelist.

10. You hung out with your friends at the mall, especially in the video arcade where you exchanged those hard-earned quarters for tokens.

11. You know that "glasnost" means openness or transparency and "perestroika" means economic restructuring.

12. You and your friends made fun of the "I've fallen and I can't get up" lady. (The fictional woman was named Mrs. Fletcher and the product was the LifeCall emergency service.)

13. You inserted "like" liberally and unnecessarily throughout your sentences. Like so, "Like, that was, like, the hardest test we ever had. So after class, I was all like asking the teacher and she was like it wouldn't have been hard if you had studied. Then I was like is that like wicked rude or what?"

14. You know there was only one way Dorothy on the Golden Girls could make Sophia behave. She simply said, "Shady Pines, Ma, Shady Pines."

15. You've actually tasted New Coke. Extra points if you wrote to Coca-Cola and insisted they bring back the original formula.

16. You remember when there was no such thing as CNN, E!, or MTV.

17. Your parents were afraid you'd cut yourself putting on a snap bracelet.

18. You were inspired by Sandra Day O'Connor, the first female Supreme Court Judge, Sally Ride, the first female astronaut and Geraldine Ferraro, the first (and as of this writing only) female Vice Presidential candidate.

19. Renting horror movie sequels about Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and Michael Myers took up a lot of your time.

20. You loved the opposite sketches and green slime on You Can't Do That On Television.

21. You played Atari, Intellivision, Sega, Nintendo, and Coleco until your hands went numb.

Not nearly enough totally tubular nostalgia for you, for sure? Need more wicked rad 80's memories? See the complete list at 1980's - 101 Ways To Tell If You're From The 1980's