Today I celebrate my 43rd birthday and this world around me is no longer my world. Am I a premature old man? Not at all, I’m just someone who sometimes embraces cynicism to survive in a hostile environment. I can prove that during these 43 years everything has gone to hell. I don’t mean to make the mistake of thinking that our times were the best, I only mean to underline that being a child today is good training for hell.
We listened to The Smiths, The Clash, and Bruce Springsteen in their prime. I challenge you to improve on that nowadays.
When I was born, the president of the United States could remember his first name and even his surname, he lowered taxes, and didn’t call Mikhail Gorbachev “Stalin.” He was the great Ronald Reagan. He was in charge and the world was a safer place.
The Pope was a saint, John Paul II.
We were playing Guess Who, and that’s as close as we got to Tinder, swiping people at high speed.
Donald Duck was not just another in the midst of a huge sea of fictional characters churned out on the conveyor belts of the entertainment industry. Donald was everything, he was the beginning and end of all ducks, and he was my friend. I’m not sure, but I think, between the ages of 7 and 12, I would have killed for Donald Duck.
Going to the video store as a family to choose a movie to watch for the weekend was quite an event. We would spend hours evaluating the scarce offer, the convenience of choosing one or the other, and finally we would walk home praying that the tape was not damaged. We truly treasured each film.
We were madly in love with stickers. Children’s rooms in the 80’s were every mother’s nightmare, with stickers plastered even on the doorjambs. However, each one of them hid a story to remember, a filia to declare, and a beating with the broom from mom for staining another wall.
The flask was one of the most important objects in our lives, perhaps because our main activity was not online sports betting or Roblox, but exploring nature’s every corner, as if we were Junior Woodchucks. Our virtual world was the outskirts of the city.
Suddenly we all started eating cereal for breakfast and Grandma looked on in amazement as she spread delicious jam on her toast. It took me a while to understand that she was right.
Our biggest gaming addiction was to Simon, and it certainly was easy to quit as soon as the new generation consoles arrived on the scene.
We spent hours watching Popeye on TV, and it was great because the woke apostles had not yet turned up to change entertainment into slave indoctrination. (READ MORE: An Approach to Filth)
My highlight of the day was watching The A-Team, where it was all fun, action, laughs, and values. Parents could be safe leaving the kids watching Hannibal Smith and his ilk, no one tried to inoculate LGTBIQAHNROMETC messages behind our backs.
We used to collect Coca Cola and Fanta bottle caps! Sometimes they even had a drawing on the underside or the face of a cartoon character. Then we used to make up games with them at school, for God’s sake, we enjoyed even the littlest things!
Big corporations hadn’t yet gotten around to saving the planet, so they ran fun promotions: we all had a plastic Coke bottle speaker with sunglasses that emitted music and danced when you tapped it.
The extractor hood didn’t turn itself off to save energy, the stove didn’t beep like a maniac, the television didn’t turn itself on, the telephone wasn’t so mobile, and the Game Boy never went into battery saving mode. In other words, household appliances did not give orders to humans, but the other way around.
My only social network, ahead of its time, was the bar on the corner.
And, well, what do you want me to say? We listened to The Smiths, The Clash, and Bruce Springsteen in their prime. I challenge you to improve on that nowadays. (READ MORE from Itxu Diaz: The Polite European Right Missed the Point)
I’m sure that 43 years from now, some child born today will write an article like mine in The American Spectator, saying that as of 2024 everything went to hell. But, please understand, today it’s my birthday, I’m feeling strangely well, one step away from happiness, I’ll be drunk all day and surrounded by friends dancing, and this is the only moment of melancholy I’m going to grant myself, I’m sorry it was your turn to suffer it.
Happy 80’s and, for God’s sake, if I can only pick one thing from that decade that I want back, it won’t be my hair, or my first girlfriend, or my favorite treats as a kid: give me back Ronald Reagan!
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