Here’s a reality check nobody asked for: the beginning of the ‘80s is as far away in time as is the year 2068. Yeah, time flies when we’re doom-scrolling cat memes.
So, why not celebrate it with a trip down memory lane with the help of Totally Awesome 80s, an Instagram page that shares all things ‘80s (with a little bit of ‘70s and ‘90s sprinkled in between).
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*two high fours and a high five from Bouche and Audi's household*
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Mine was up until 7 years ago when my parents finally downsized. 47 years with the same number!
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We had to memorize our home phone number and address...my mom even made us keep a quarter in our shoe for the payphone just in case...KangaRoos were so cool
Not only that but one house we lived in, in a village in Cheshire, started with a four digit phone number, and I remember the fifth digit being added (in the days when the dialling code for your area was a whole other number that you learnt later on)
I remember dialling local numbers without a dialling code. I also remember '1' day, when all phone numbers got an extra '1' after the initial '0'.
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Oh shart...I DO remember it...hadn't thought of it in 30 years, and its still there.
I'm 70yrs old ... Had a 'party line' lift make sure no one else using (or listen if they were lol) 4 digits #5370
I'm old enough to have memorized a 6-digit home phone number when I was a kid : 213307
Three digit. Changed to four digits a year later. 3119.
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I left home in 2001 and my brain needs less than one second to remember the phone number. This one the only number you could give to friends and girls, the only number to remember if you were in trouble.
As soon as I read this the number immediately popped right into my head.
I remember 2 of my old home phone numbers from when I was a kid! And my grandparents number which I can remember calling and not having to put in an area code! Oh and my moms old work phone number from 20 years ago! You know how many times I called my mom at work? Enough to remember it two decades later! And HBO used to be on channel 7! Lol
Pretty easy for me. Childhood phone number (small country town, 1950s) 111. Pronounced "one double one". Actually, that's how my Dad answered the phone until he died, in 2014. Because they just added a whole bunch of numbers, but the last 3 were still 111.
I think it's a real shame I never got to experience receiving a reverse charge phone call from my kids.
Wouldn't that mean one of them is in jail? It's no fun, I speak from experience.
Load More Replies... Gee. How did you know. I do remember the phone number. This is... disturbing.
Actually it was the home phone. The one with the curly cord. You hoped your brother or sister wasnt on it. And dont call after X pm.
My parents still have "my childhood phone number" which I will never forget. And if I don't write my new password on a sticky note & put it in the folder with my 5 million other passwords I wouldn't remember it 10 minutes after I created it 😕🤣
Heck, I remember my childhood friend's home phone number, but I don't know my son's or daughter's.
I remember my childhood phone number. I can not tell you the current phone numbers of my mother or my sister or my best friend.
my house, my granny's, my three childhood friends', my high school's, and this is strange but post office and police station used to have designated local number and i still remember them.
I had ONE ten digit childhood phone number. I have around 350 passwords that are far longer and more complicated, therefore I use a password manager so I don't need to know what they are.
781-7189! So the weird thing about my number is in the late 80's early 90's Jeb Bush used our phone number on his business cards that he gave to people he didn't actually want to talk to, haha. We got calls for him all the time.
Not only is the home number etched into my brain, but the taverns I'd have to call at the behest of my mother to find my father who'd busted his butt all day and just wanted a couple beers before coming home.
Viking 20281 Shrewsbury Ma 1950's and I have to write down all my passwords
I've actually incorporated my best friends childhood phone numbers into my passwords. I will never forget those!
And no, we don't have that number anymore. It's been 30 years.
Load More Replies... Yup. Still remember my first childhood phone number (from when we moved into the house I grew up in), my second childhood phone number (from when my parents had to change our number because we were getting calls for some convict), both sets of grandparents' phone numbers (that are still in my phone despite my last grandparent dying 5 years ago), and my childhood "friend's" phone number
I’m 36 and I still remember the first landline number we had. The fun part is that my parents got our first mobile phone in 2002, it was a Nokia 5110. At first we shared it, only getting separate phones a couple of years later. My mom kept the original number, and my dad and I got new ones. Now my parents are long gone, but that number has been in the family for 22 years and it’s been my number for the past 16 years.
699-7904. On a rotary phone, and we lived in the “country” so we had a party line
I can still remember my childhood phone number, because it's the same one I still have. It's been 23 years and counting.
in the small town i grew up in . We only had to dial the last 4 digits to make a phonecall
My childhood phone was a party line that started with a word not a number. And you could actually talk to an operator back then.
I still remember my address and phone number from the house I lived at from76 to 84
So, Totally Awesome 80s is an Instagram page (Facebook as well) dedicated to celebrating one of the most iconic decades of the last century—the awesome '80s, mixed in with a little bit of the '70s and the '90s.
The page was created back in mid 2018 and has since then posted nearly 8,000 bits of content and amassed a following of 325,000 people.
It’s hard to explain what made the '80s such an iconic time period.
On an objective level, it was the decade that gave the world MTV and CNN, some of the first instances of personal home computing with IBM and Apple, and the first mobile phone, Motorola DynaTAC 8000X.
It was also a decade of great tragedy with the NASA’s Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and the explosion of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Reactor #4.
But the thing folks talk about the most is the sound of the '80s—its music scene.
Many consider the nostalgia that '80s music creates to be the strongest out there with numerous artists coming back to cover popular songs and sounds from the decade.
One commenter speculated that the '80s was a careless and fun decade. Considering modern day stresses imposed upon new generations, looking back to a decade whose fashion and music sound carefree, it becomes a nice escape for the younger generations.
Taking a break from riding all over the place eating Ding Dongs that came wrapped in aluminum foil, drinking Tang and battling tanks on Atari 2600 before taking off on another adventure!
I show my age by confessing that I knew the names of all the songs these lines came from straight away
There’s also the idea of having parents who listen a lot to '80s music, instilling an interesting sense of nostalgia for their kids as well, even if they didn’t live through it.
Others speculated that it could just be history doing its cyclical thing again. Those who grew up in the '80s are now becoming primary producers of pop culture. Considering all the '80s franchise reboots, Stranger Things and the like, they all come from people who grew up in that era for the people who grew up in that era.
For non-Americans, that's Parental Guidance content rating.
This idea of revivals is further supported by another commenter, who explained that the '70s saw a huge '50s revival with the TV show Happy Days and the movie Grease. Then there was a '60s revival in the '80s with The Doors, The Who, and the like filling entire stadiums. Apply the paradigm far enough and you might just be able to explain why “old” things are hip again.
But that’s just music. Think of the remaining part of pop culture that happened back in the '80s: the Master System, NES. and Atari 7800 all came out in the early part of the decade; Polaroid reached peak popularity during this time; shows like Full House, The Transformers and Duck Tales were huge back then; movies like Back To The Future debuted during the '80s. The list goes on.
Your momma is so stupid/fat/lazy...[insert random offensive insult here]...battle it out, everyone laughs, and we all play dodgeball or G.I. Joe until the street lights came on.
Well, that’s that. If you enjoyed this article, we have plenty more where that came from. Well, not there per se, but the '80s! And you can always check out the Instagram page.
And if you don’t feel like going back in time any more, then why not stay in the present and share your takes and stories in the comment section below!
Why do I feel like driving a drop top 5.0 Mustang all the sudden?
Time Magazine: "The Red Brick Road is supposed to lead travellers from Quadling Country to the great Emerald City. However, in the movie, the road is shown ending up at…Munchkin City Hall."
I watched Sesame Street before there even was an Elmo... And Oscar was orange!
The hole in the ozone layer thanks you for your contribution, hair spray.
anyone else try to find adult content no matter how scrambled the picture was? you got super excited when you thought you sorta kinda saw something.
That's a Honda ATC 90. Fun as hell but basically banned after too many people kept dying on them.
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The title made me laugh as I do remember my childhood phone number and I use it with variations as a password
When I caught my son messing with the router a few years ago, I changed the password to my old phone number from when I was eight. I'll never forget it, but he would never think of it.
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I just started re-listening to some of my favourite’80’s music, eurythmics, police, talking heads, Alison moyet and Kate bush, to name a few. It was a great decade for music
I still remember my parents phone number, (and my childhood best friends' number too. Now as for my own number....NOPE! 😜🙂
As a teen, I could relate to half of these. The other half I knew about but couldn't relate to. I think all the other kids in my school wouldn't even know what a phone book is.
The title made me laugh as I do remember my childhood phone number and I use it with variations as a password
When I caught my son messing with the router a few years ago, I changed the password to my old phone number from when I was eight. I'll never forget it, but he would never think of it.
Load More Replies... I just started re-listening to some of my favourite’80’s music, eurythmics, police, talking heads, Alison moyet and Kate bush, to name a few. It was a great decade for music
I still remember my parents phone number, (and my childhood best friends' number too. Now as for my own number....NOPE! 😜🙂
As a teen, I could relate to half of these. The other half I knew about but couldn't relate to. I think all the other kids in my school wouldn't even know what a phone book is.
