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Memories of 1982-1988: Life in Reaganland.

1.   On December 16, 1982 we were living in Montgomery, Ohio, and I was a week shy of being four, when we heard a massive crashing sound, and then sirens. Just down the street smoke was billowing, and it would turn out three FBI agents were flying with a suspect who’d hidden stolen cash somewhere known only to him, and he was taking them there. Since all aboard the small plane perished, the money is unfound to this day.

2.   When I was three, playing out in the fallen leaves on a windy November day at my grandparents’ house (the house we live in today) resulted in a fever of 104, along with an excruciating ear infection. I got checked into the hospital and there were concerns I could actually die if my fever went much higher.

3.   I got my first library card at age five, summer 1984 and it said: “Expires June 1988.” That now long-ago date seemed SO FAR AWAY, like it could never possibly come.

4.   I had an imaginary friend when I was four, and I’d wake up in the night and there he’d sometimes be, this friendly man who told me he was my grandson. He taught me to read, or at least somehow I was reading at a third-grade level by age four. I told people a man would come talk to me at night, and everyone thought it was a hoot that I called him my grandson, but nobody freaked that I said there was a man in my room! One part I have reflected on these last forty years and that is the man…my “grandson,” told me to write lots of things down, and in my life I have.

5.   When I was four we were still in the same townhouse in Montgomery, and I was jumping on my bed like I wasn’t supposed to, tripped, and busted my mouth open. I was more afraid of getting in trouble for jumping than I was of my pain, so I called my grandma, and she said to put ice on my mouth and maybe the swelling would go down and I could hide what I’d done. I said I couldn’t get to the freezer without passing Mom, so Grandma said she’d call her and distract her while I sneaked in, and that’s what she did and I got the ice and Mom never knew.

6.   My dad got an early screening pass for Return of the Jedi, and told me I was one of the first kids in America who’d be seeing it. As a fan he was thrilled but I was four and it didn’t hold my attention. Sorrrrry.

7.   In 1983 I developed a fascination for Vikings, and my dad got me a stack of books on them, and I’d happily play at being a Norse raider, making the sofa my longboat, but I noticed Vikings all had beards, so I got the bright idea to tie my hair under my chin to simulate facial hair. Trouble was it got so knotted it took my mom to get it undone, and I remember sitting inches from her while she got the tangles loose, a look of concentration taking over what I thought was the most beautiful face in the world.

8.   When I was five my grandpa asked if I would like to shoot a gun. I said well, sure, so he got a .22 and let me make holes in paper targets twenty-five yards away, and he was so impressed with my aim he used to show me off to his business associates. When I shared this cherished memory with my blue state friends in college, they universally freaked out. Welcome to red state America, ladies.

9.   Before she became a full-on drug addict in late childhood, my cousin Allie was a much nicer person, and one day when I was in kindergarten and she was in about second grade, she and I had a sno-cone stand out in front of her mom’s house while Aunt Christie sat near us in a lawn chair. I remember a police car pulled up and though we were only charging a dime per cone, the officers each gave us a dollar. I felt completely rich.

10.   In first grade a roughhousing boy named Carl came down the slide after me and kicked me into a mud puddle. I got soaked, and my mom had to bring me clean clothes. Carl got paddled in front of the class for it and cried before the principal ever touched him, then got an extra swat on top of the first three for “not taking it like a man.” (A man? He was six.) I’d never seen anyone get paddled before and felt so sick about it I tried to be nice to Carl, who remained a jerk, and that same week stole my trapper keeper with balloons on the covers, then got paddled for that too when the teacher found it in his book bag. Today Carl is a deacon. No joke.

11.   My parents were young when I was little, my dad was still in college getting his masters til I was six, and money was tight. So when in summer ‘85 Dad got his job, he took us to Disney World, which was something that meant a lot to him to be able to do. There, though, we were on the jungle cruise ride, and some man tried to spit from the boat into the water, and a big loogie landed on my dad’s arm, nearly resulting in a fistfight. Security came and my dad and the other man got taken off for a while, but Dad came back and said it was cool, and we continued our vacation there.

12.   When New Coke came out I remember the big controversy about it and how it failed, and because I was six I felt sorry for New Coke like it had actual feelings and knew it was being rejected as no cola had in all of history, so somehow I got the idea that we’d give it a funeral. My parents indulged me, and we buried a can in the tiny back yard of our townhouse, where it may or may not be to this day.

13.   I spent nearly a quarter of the ‘80s in Ireland. Not only would I go every summer, but a few times during my dad’s long job-related absences, Mom took me over, and we stayed for half-planned visits that could last weeks. My grandmother there was nothing like my grandma back home. She was not unkind but she was very serious, very religious, and very convinced it was impossible for me to receive a proper Catholic upbringing in the US, so she had me go to Mass EVERY morning, and in due time, to confession every Saturday. No days off, no exceptions. And then when not in church she would tell me about the lives of saints and have me pray decade after decade on the rosary with her and grade-school-age Aunt Sarah. Sometimes when I mention all the time I spent in Ireland, people get the idea I was over there kissing the Blarney Stone and having a great vacation, but it really wasn’t like that.

14.   Christmas 1985 every kid wanted Teddy Ruxpin, a teddy bear that would talk and blink and interact. Trouble was, the one I got was possessed. It would come on when it was switched off, and start moving its mouth without saying words. Sure I know it was just defective and we should have returned it, but the thing was, that bear gave me the creeps, and one night it came on next to my bed and opened its eyes and mouth and seemed to look right at me while emitting this screeching moan that left me screaming hysterically, tangled in my sheets while trying to run. Teddy went to Goodwill the next day.

15.   In Burlington we lived on a street that had houses under construction, ours being among the first built, and while we had to stay off the job sites during the day, evenings we were allowed to go there. When I was eight I was playing chase with other girls, and as I ran around the outside corner of the concrete basement of a half-built house, I scraped my leg against it. I kept running til the other girls started screaming, so I looked down and there was a flap of skin about the size of a quarter hanging off my calf, and blood was streaming down to my sock, which was already soaked with red. Then I felt the pain! Turns out one edge of the concrete was knife-sharp and sliced me good. I was taken to the hospital and as luck would have it, a cosmetic surgeon happened to be there who sewed my leg up using three fine stitches where most doctors would have used one, which he said would help me not have as much of a scar. I healed so well that over the years I have challenged people to find the place where the cut was, and it’s never been easy.

16.   One day I was trying to get something off the top shelf in our garage and I knocked down a paint can that fell from about ten feet up and went through the window of my mom’s car, sloshing paint all across the interior. When my mom came hurrying to see what the noise was, I ran over and held the door closed, and said this line she still quotes to this day: “Don’t come in, it’ll only cause you stress to see this!”

17.   We were the poor relations in the family. Just true. My dad worked for the government, while his dad owned three companies, his oldest sister married a sickeningly rich man, and his next oldest sister was not only a lawyer herself, but she too married a wealthy husband who owned radio stations. Thus all my paternal cousins were richer than me, and some made sure I knew it. Still, I had a childhood with eclectic privileges, and one was I went to Democratic fundraising events at parties among people who were known to be influential donors. Through these I met people in politics. John Glenn I met several times. I also shook hands with Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill. Amy Carter was at another event, as was Tipper Gore. I was at one where Ted Kennedy (blah) spoke but that doesn’t stick out in my mind. One who does was a fellow named Paul Simon, (not to be confused with Edie Brickell’s husband) who wore a bow-tie and spoke in a monotone. At one pre-Super Tuesday event in 1988, I was taken along to hear a candidate named Joe Biden talk, and he had crazy-looking eyes.

18.   All through my childhood when we were driving to my grandparents’ house, we’d go by the street where my future husband lived and grew up, and not until 2001 would I know we’d been doing that all my life. I’ve often wondered if I ever saw him out someplace when we went by not knowing of our impending connection.

19.   At my confirmation when I was seven, it was my turn to approach Archbishop Pilarczyk for him to anoint my head with oil, and I started involuntarily giggling…and giggling, and then I really giggled. Much of the congregation started laughing, mostly with me, and though I was told it was a cute moment, for the longest time I used to blush when someone would tease me about that.

20.   I was friends by proximity rather than closeness with a little girl named Michelle, who lived by us in Burlington, and one lovely summer day she and I were having a picnic out by the woods behind our houses, and she went in to use the restroom, and while she was gone I took a bite of her peanut butter and honey sandwich, and then because I didn’t want her to find out, I threw it into a thorn bush, and when she came back told her I had to get rid of her sandwich because it was covered with ants. I got the impression she really wanted that peanut butter and honey sandwich.

21.   The Easter I was seven I was in Ireland and had a lovely yellow dress my grandma back home bought me, and my cousin Madga, the only cousin older than me (and much, much bigger) got jealous of people complimenting the dress, so in our grandparents’ garden she said, “I think your dress is foul!” And she pushed me down and started rubbing dirt on me. Well it was like Magda was rubbing the dirt on my grandma, and I count that as the first time my Celtic berserker DNA activated, and leaped up and grabbed blubbery Magda, and next thing I knew we were rolling around on the ground and I was pounding her and yanking her hair, even head-butting her while howling in this sobbing, roaring cry, and people flooded out of the house to break us up, my uncle lifted me straight into the air, and I had to sit in a corner, where I cried for a while over my ruined dress, but when on the phone I told my dad what I’d done, he was amused and proud and said he would buy me a dress just like my ruined one, so I felt better.

22.   We were at King’s Island amusement park in June 1987, and my dad happened to have on a bright red shirt, and unbeknownst to us it was “Gay Day,” an unofficial event in those Reagan days when gay men would descend on the park en masse, and one sign of looking for a guy-guy hookup was you wore a red shirt. He got hit on by bunches of men, and it was SO funny….

23.   I was almost an extra in Rainman. A scene was being shot in a Newport, Kentucky restaurant called Pompilio’s---it’s the one where the toothpicks get dropped---and the script called for a family to be sitting in the background in a booth. I made it so far that I was given instructions that included not looking at Misters Hoffman and Cruise on the set (I never saw them) only to be abruptly told it was thought a child in the scene might be too distracting, thanks for your time. Thus ended my career in movies.

24.   The MLB All-Star game came to Riverfront Stadium in July 1988, as did Good Morning America, doing a live broadcast. It was a fun day to be downtown, since it was also the city’s 200th birthday and the river (low because of a drought) was filled with historic steamboats, and the 1860s suspension bridge was hung with banners that showed flying pigs, a symbol of the city. Grandpa took a bunch of us to the game that evening, where a lot of famous people were in the stands, and there were fireworks and jet flyovers, the Vice President threw out the first pitch, and I remember thinking at nine years old that it was the best day of my whole life.

25.   In October 1988 Dana was inexplicably hanging with an Eagle Scout who played high school baseball, but who was a bit innocent for her even though she was fourteen. The boy’s father was an AA-member, and when he suggested his son go as well to possibly prevent him following in his footsteps, Dana was not supportive of the idea, claiming that was like saying everyone who ever drank alcohol had a problem with it.

She told me she wanted to rescue this boy from AA, so when he headed to a meeting at an American Legion Hall, Dana rode with him, and because I was with her, she took me along. We sat in the hall’s basement waiting for the meeting to start, a coffee pot making the place smell like breakfast, and the man who was to head the meeting said Dana and I had to leave, so we went upstairs where it was semi-dark, and Dana was wrapping herself up in this big American flag right when the man who’d told us to leave came up and saw her doing that and said, “Hit the road, girls.”

We walked out front but it was hot and Dana wanted to get in the car belonging to the senior and turn on the AC, but he had the keys, so she tried to get back in the hall and found we were locked out, so Dana, seeing a challenge, went to the window and tried to get the high school boy’s attention, but the AA leader came out instead and said he was going to call the police.

At mention of police I took off walking down the street while Dana told the AA man what she thought of him, then caught up with me and was like, “I am so going to f**k over that a***ole drunk who runs the meeting. Only f**kwads who can’t hold their booze need AA anyway, for Christ’s sake.”

Suddenly though she grabbed my arm and took off running toward a bus which I remember said TANK on it, and paid for us to ride downtown, where we walked seven blocks to her mother’s law office, and she got an intern to drive us to her house, where she yelled at her brother Jared and took her day out on him.

I don’t know if Dana ever hung out with the boy from AA after that, but I think he was a good-living type of person who probably made a lucky escape from my hellion cousin.

And those were my 1980s.