I insisted my daughter go shopping the other day. Like two generations of women before her, she’s become one of the “blister sisters,” and walks about 10k a day. She desperately needed new sneakers.
As a 51 year-old with hip and back issues in part perhaps from not heeding my own mother’s early warnings about struttin’ ‘round in stilt heels high enough to reach life’s highest of high top shelves, I wanted to do what I could to make sure my daughter didn’t go without her own list of unheeded motherly advice.
Monstrosity pants
Well, she didn’t buy sneakers, but she did purchase new jeans. I noticed the label in the garbage can. It read; ‘80s Mom Jeans.’ What the heck? 80s Mom Jeans?!? “Try them on,” I urged. She did. High-waisted acid-washed monstrosity pants. That’s a thing now? Apparently, looking as awful as you can in a pair of jeans is cool these days. Who knew?
Other things I’ve noticed in these Back to the Future times? 80s bands on Ts all the cool kids are wearing. From Van Halen and Def Leppard to Gus N’ Roses, the youngsters are suddenly 80s wannabes.
And the music? They’re all TikToking spastically while insisting ain’t nobody gonna Break-a-my-Stride, oh no! to 80s classics.
Seeing your 12 year-old chopping next to you in the kitchen as she sings Quit Playing Games With My Heart or swings her hips to Mambo Number Five or does some choreographed dance to The Conga past me in the hallway is a little triply, I’ll admit. But being 80s ladies is also pretty cool. When you and your kid can sing along to the same tune, it’s deadly, though my daughter and others like her seem to be doing the 80s better than I ever did while living through it.
Super gnarly chicks
My kid was playing a song the other evening as we prepared supper. I knew it was Queen, but I didn’t know the song. I honestly had never heard it before, so I asked her the song’s name.
You would have thought she was about to disown her own lived-through-the-80s mother. “You don’t know this???!” she scoffed. The song, Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy, was one I couldn’t remember ever hearing before. And, because I felt so ashamed in front of my 80s loving pre-teen, I said; “I was probably too busy paying attention to my Dirty Dancing and Solid Gold dance moves to remember every song.” Hopefully that upped my 80s cool quota. Or not. Hard to say what her mind was really thinking behind those rolled back in her head eyeballs.
Some things never change, no matter the generation. We kept rockin’ out to the ‘oldies’ through supper. Prince. Springsteen. And of course, A-ha. There we were, 51 year-old me stuttin’ what my momma gave me in my Lulu’s and my 12 year-old doing the same in her 80s mom jeans. Just two super gnarly chicks bonding over some super rad tunes. Totally tubular and gag me with a spoon.
Pam Pardy, The Herald’s Managing Editor, can be reached by emailing [email protected]