Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

I breathe a sigh of relief as I dive back into my past.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I'm one of those people who grew up in the 80's!  To a huge degree, I still live in the 80's.  My musical taste, favorite movies, teen crushes, food favorites.  Everything about the 80's makes me wish I could take a time portal and revert back 20 years of my life.

Naturally, it wasn't always the best period.  You had Reagan, the Cold War, hairspray, aerosol cans, the AIDS epidemic blown out of proportion, etc.  But for me being a pre-adolescent, the 80's represented my own innocence.  Hell, I still think Lego from 1984 and on is "new" or "modern" even. 

But truthfully, the innocence for me represented not having to worry so much.  Sure, I was stressed out back then too.  Had terrible teachers, rude kids in elementary and jr high school, the start of various gangs around my area, pressure to be cool.  But those were all social problems.  At home, my house was still in working condition.  My father was having staiblity problems, yes, mostly in the 4th grade when he was forced into an alcoholic anonymous type of institution (which never really helped him, making me wish my family could sue them for basically giving us a whole lot of shit for nothing).  But the main thing was that my family was there, healthy, not having to deal with the level of problems that we're dealing with now.

I think the only big progress since then for me has been the internet.  But I think the Internet has been more hassle than the benefit for me.  It seems like I would've been better off more focused on just my writing overall than becoming some internet engineer, trying to get a steady income.

When I see my mom and how she's locked in her little world, reminiscing, I'm starting to not blame her for delving in her own nostalgia.  It seems sad that problems only seem to progress as one grows older.  You'd think that some of these simple problems like having a good job, fixed up house, quality food and generally speaking the improvement of one's life would be simple.  It's not.  It just gets more difficult with more people trying to exploit you for every dime, second, and thing in your existence.