American Dreaming – 1983 – 1989 / Part III

One of the by-products of the “Me Decade” as a lot of sociologists wound up calling that era within American history was that there was a lot of new wealth seemingly generated through the recovery of the economy coupled with some interestingly self-serving practices within the stock market. The notion of leveraged buyouts, mega-mergers and hostile takeovers coupled with the emergence of technology within our corporate culture generated a lot of new millionaires and even some billionaires.

We had a war on drugs, a war on medical students in Granada (we really had to do something about all the students who were dangerously close to graduation) and towards the end of the decade began the path towards the first Gulf War.

Kermit found it difficult to be green, we went to the Muppet Movie with our special glasses, Grease 2 was not the one, Jaws was seen in 3-D and then four years later got its revenge, ET phoned home, The Star Wars trilogy ended (sort of) with the Jedi returning, we were introduced to Indiana Jones and Disco finally died while MTV destroyed all other music as we knew it. It was the decade of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters and video arcades. We suffered through bad fashion, Members Only jackets, Mohawk hair-dos, Hair bands and IROC camaros

Hospital costs began there dizzyingly spiral of ever rising costs, we lost a lot of great talent to AIDS and despite all the new wealth, unemployment rose and our national debt doubled in the first six years of Reagan’s presidency.

On the plus side we saw the first woman being given the nod as a Supreme Court justice, Jessie Jackson became the first black candidate for president, Geraldine Ferraro became the first female vice-presidential candidate and the Berlin Wall came down which seemed to signify that the cold war was finally over.

Those newly rich were the ones that put the stamp on this decade with binge buying and a “Shop ‘til you drop” attitude that permeated our cuture’s practices and thinking. It seems everyone’s favorite idea was to spend time at the mall and to acquire more and more material goods. The way folks were trained to “keep score” was to see who could acquire the most toys. In this way we could find out who really was winning and who was losing. I confess that I did get caught up in this ridiculousness. During my first marriage we schemed to pull of vacations we couldn’t afford, bought toys that we didn’t need. Camcorders, video games, talk shows and reality shows became part of our lives. We were constantly spending more than we earned and while fun, it eventually came home to roost.

My dreams of pursuing artistic or educational goals stalled during that decade as my focus became family, raising my son, keeping the wolf away from the front door and trying to make sense of a relationship that didn’t really work.

As the decade came to a close, I was wrestling with what to do with my life, how to care for my son as a potentially absentee dad, how I could seek out some career satisfaction and new challenges professionally and wanting to finally leave my home town area and perhaps see and do more as I was approached the age of 30.

---Jim