I've been going through my old Flickr account - remember Flickr? Does anyone still use Flickr? What even is Flickr? It used to be the thing bloggers had to join to be like the cool kids, and now blogs aren't even the thing bloggers have to join to be like the cool kids. Blogs are so 2007.
And I am so 1983.
I was 10, going on 11, in 1983. I was still in primary school and we used to dance for assemblies, dances we would make up in our lunch times, me and my squad. Except it wasn't my squad, it was probably Trudy's squad and I was probably the tallest and most un-co member of the squad, but I was not the worst dancer. That was Kirsten. She was (probably still is) 1,004 times nicer as a human being than I will ever be, but also a worse dancer. Kirsten had a sweatshirt she wore a lot that commemorated the 1982 football World Cup, which was in Spain, which I know because her sweatshirt had Espana '82 on it, and which fact I am going to remember for the rest of my whole entire natural life, God alone knows why. The only two songs I can remember that we danced to are Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart and MJ's Thriller. Or something off the Thriller album. Things get hazy on the details. Mr Cross was my teacher and I felt as much of a round peg in a triangle hole then as I do now.
Which has nothing to do with Flickr. Except nostalgia. And nostalgia was a word I had to learn for my spelling list, probably sometime in 1983, only I mistook the definition as meaning something to do with flying, so the sentence I wrote to accompany the definition was a little off. But I do feel people should mistake things for flying more often, I am sure we would all be much happier. And to be fair, nostalgia is a kind of mental flying. So there.
Looking through my Flickr photos, I felt like I am a total dick, because they were way better than I remembered. I used to take fun and funny photos, at least some of the time, before I started taking myself much too seriously. When did that even happen? It needs to unhappen. I need to dance to Bonnie Tyler (but not MJ, I know he remains beloved but his adult behaviour, ew) and perm my hair and wear overalls and bulky shoulder pads and think that Scott Baio should be my boyfriend. No, wait, Scott Baio is an utter douche. Um. Alan Alda. Alan Alda circa *M*A*S*H* can be my boyfriend. I used to drink black coffee and eat stale bread when I watched *M*A*S*H* so I could feel part of the stuck-eternally-in-Korea Army action, and that might be something I should never admit to out loud. Please don't tell me if Alan Alda is also an utter douche. I adored Hawkeye as only a young square peg shoved into a triangle hole can.
I need to go and cook dinner now. Do you know what was also great about 1983? I never had to cook the dinner (well, except for that time when Mum was drunk and/or high and left the dinner boiling and our plates on a hot element while she crashed out in bed , and the plates exploded, which my brother and my father somehow either never noticed or pretended to ignore so I cleaned them up and finished the rest of dinner, which I don't suppose is so much cooking dinner as averting having the house burn down. Other than that though...) We're having savoury mince, which is a treat because my youngest child hates it so much I don't cook it at all, but she's at work now, so booyah.
