Tweet by Sheri White In early summer of 1981, I was a member of our church’s Teen Club (shut up). I mostly joined to please my mom, who figured I wouldn’t be doing anything I shouldn’t if I were a member. I did have some fun and actually met a cute boy named Joe. Joe was funny, smart and together. …
Category: It Came from the 80s
It Came From the ’80s: The World According to Garp (1982)
Tweet By Sheri White Last week I said that every girl dates a creep at some time in her life. Well, she will also date a really cool guy at some point. My cool guy was Andy. I met him when a group of us went to the Mall in DC on July 4th to party and listen to the…
It Came From the ’80s: Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1982)
Tweet By Sheri White At some point in a girl’s life, she will date a creep. She may not realize that the guy was a creep until well after they’ve broken up, but trust me – every girl dates one. My creep was Ivan. I dated him in between first-love Kevin and Marine Kevin. I met him while Marybeth and…
It Came From the ’80s: The Day After (1983)
Tweet by Sheri White My parents had the Cuban Missile Crisis when they were in school; I had the threat of world nuclear annihilation during my school years. Occasionally a warning siren would be tested while we were in the middle of class, practically ensuring my uniform would need a washing that night from the sweat that had soaked it.…
It Came From the ’80s: Urban Cowboy (1980)
Tweet by Sheri White Is this movie really thirty years old now? Have I been obsessed it with for that long? I was fourteen when that movie came out – and I was dating Kevin. Talk about young! My youngest just turned thirteen; I don’t think I could let her start dating that young. Urban Cowboy had me enthralled the…
It Came From the ’80s: Mannequin (1987)
Tweet by Sheri White In April 1987, Mitch and I were married, but living apart since New Year’s thanks to the United States Marine Corps. I thought that was bad enough, but then Mitch got even worse orders – he was going to be on TDY in Okinawa for six months. That pretty much ended our marriage, although it would…
It Came From the ’80s: National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)
Tweet by Sheri White I didn’t see this movie in the theater; my brother and I rented it when it was available on video, about a year or so later. Renting a movie back then was both cool and frustrating – cool because you could watch a movie without commercials in your own house, and frustrating because half the time…
It Came From the ’80s: Endless Love (1981)
Tweet by Sheri White The summer of 1981 was the best summer of my teen years; I’ve mentioned that before. Kevin and I were wildly in love, school was out and life was good. Except for the fact that my mom had recently forbidden me to see Kevin! I was crushed. But supposedly he was a bad influence (may or…
It Came From the ’80s: Scrooged (1988)
Tweet by Sheri White On December 5th, 1988, I gave birth to an 8-½ pound beautiful baby girl, Sarah. I was a mom for the first time, married to someone I wasn’t happy with. I wasn’t working; the plan was for me to work at home (I typed up ship specifications for a Navy contractor) a few weeks after Sarah…
It Came From the ’80s: A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)
Tweet by Sheri White On July 4th, 1984, a group of us went to Washington, DC to celebrate Independence Day on the Mall. My friend Joanne brought her boyfriend, Joe and his brother John. Although my friend Mary seemed to like John, he and I ended up snuggled together watching the fireworks, and dated for about a year. I’ve mentioned…
It Came From the 80s: Dirty Dancing (1987)
Tweet by Sheri White In the Summer of 1987, Mitch and I had been married less than a year. We had gotten married in September 1986, and in December, he was sent on TDY to North Carolina. Since there weren’t any jobs for me there, and the Marine Corps’ motto was “If we wanted you to have a wife, we…
It Came From the ’80s: It’s Just a Thriller! (1983)
Tweet by Sheri White You may argue that Thriller is a video and not a movie, and you’d be partially right. But I would argue that Thriller was so much more than a music video – it was an event. I had just turned 18 when Michael Jackson’s amazing album was released. The music was absolutely phenomenal, and Marybeth and…
It Came From the ’80s: Top Gun (1986)
Tweet by Sheri White In the summer of 1986, I was engaged to Mitch who was in the Marine Corps. My best friend at the time, Lisa, was dating a guy who was in the Army (for the life of me, I can’t remember his name). We double-dated a lot, and the guys would rib each other good-naturedly about each…
It Came from the ’80s: Midnight Movie – The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Tweet by Sheri White In the Winter of 1983, I was dating another guy named Kevin (not to be confused with first-love Kevin), who had joined the Marine Corps before we met. He was sent to boot camp right after Christmas. I missed him a lot; I fell for him fast and hard before he left for basic. This was…
It Came From the… ’90s! City Slickers (1991)
Tweet by Sheri White This is a bit of a change from the usual, but it’s an important one. In the Fall of 1991, I was a divorced single mom. My little girl and I lived with my parents since I couldn’t afford a place of my own. I was a typist for a clearance office; that is, I typed…
It Came From the ’80s: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
Tweet by Sheri White The year 1986 brought a lot of changes to my life. I was with Mitch now, a Marine stationed at the 8th and I Barracks in DC. I had met him in Georgetown at a bar called “Annie’s” and although together less than a year, we got engaged a year to the date we met. We…
It Came From the ’80s: The Shining (1980)
Tweet by Sheri White In the Summer of 1981 (my favorite summer in my teen years), Kevin and I were on-again. However, my mom caught us making out on the porch one night and I wasn’t allowed to see him anymore. Right. It was really hard for her to enforce that since she worked full-time and I was pretty much…
It Came From the ’80s: Neighbors (1981)
Tweet by Sheri White December of 1981 was a heady time for me. Kevin and I had been on-again since November, and he and I went to my school’s Christmas dance. This was my first semi-formal dance, and I was so happy and excited. I wore a beautiful light purple dress with a dark purple shrug-type cover; Kevin just wore…
It Came from the ’80s: Where Were You in ’82?
Tweet by Sheri White In early Fall of 1982, Marybeth and I (and a few other friends) were working at a local amusement park called Wild World. What cooler place was there for a teenager to work? It was a brand new park, so there weren’t many rides yet. It did have the largest wave pool at the time, before…
It Came From the 80s: Stripes and the Art of Popcorn Throwing!
Tweet by Sheri White The Summer of 1981 was the best summer of my teen years. My on-off relationship with Kevin the Lifeguard was on again, I didn’t need to get a job yet, MTV debuted, and most of my time was spent at the pool (although Kevin was no longer a lifeguard) or watching videos. Howard Stern was on…
It Came From the 80s: What Do You Get When You Mix Pizza, Beer, and… The Fly?
Tweet By Sheri White In the summer of 1987, I flew to Texas to visit with my dad. I was married to the Marine at the time, but he had been to deployed to Okinawa (I did get to go visit him there; it was very cool). I was lonely a lot, though, and needed a change of scenery, so…
It Came From the 80s: How Valley Girl, Like, Totally Cured My Broken Heart!
Tweet by Sheri White In July of 1985, I had been seeing John for about a year. He was cute, very nerdy (majoring in computer programming), very possessive, and usually got his own way about stuff. For instance, movies. I don’t remember seeing many movies I wanted to see while we were dating; they were usually John’s choice. I was…
It Came From the ’80s: How ‘The Exorcist’ Corrupted Two Catholic School Girls!
Tweet by Sheri White If you’ve been reading my essays, you’d think that I only saw movies with boys when I was a teenager. Not so! One of my best friends, Marybeth, and I saw The Exorcist together at a midnight movie. We worked together, with some of our other friends, at an amusement park called Wild World (which is…
It Came From the ’80s: Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983)
Tweet by Sheri White During my Senior year of high school, I was seeing someone named Kevin (not the Kevin from Friday the 13th) who had gone to Marine Corps boot camp after Christmas. I missed him, and hated not having a date on the weekends, but hey – I was dating a Marine. That was pretty cool at the…
It Came From the ’80s: Friday the 13th (1980)
Tweet by Sheri White (Editor’s Note: If you haven’t seen the original Friday the 13th (what’s wrong with you?!?), and you don’t want to know how a major character dies or how the movie ends, beware… here there be spoilers…) At the tender age of 14, I met my first love. His name was Kevin, and he was a lifeguard…