Chris Penningroth’s Weltanschauung

     Tonight, Kane and his wife hosted an 80’s party! I can’t remember the last time I went to a party that much fun! Strange, the parties I went to in the 80s didn’t generally turn out like that.  Maybe that’s because I was a doom-and-gloom Goth misdressed as a preppie with a burnout haircut (it wasn’t a mullet, though!). 

     Christina looked totally cute, she dug out some hairspray and did the big hair act (as did most of the other spouses).  We both found jeans jackets.  I grabbed a Cheers t-shirt (bought it in Boston to replace the old Cheers t-shirt Scott brought me from Bean-town back in 1989).  Christina found a turquoise shirt with logo "It started with a kiss…."

     One of the guys dressed up as Boy George (that was disturbingly good makeup work).  One of the gals was Punky Brewster.  There was at least one Like a Virgin version of Madonna, and another Desperately Seeking Susan version.  One of the spouses did a credible Flashdance dress-up.  A couple of the new guys showed up looking like Crockett and Tubbs from Miami Vice.  The squadron commander even wore his letterman’s jacket sporting ‘83.  Shoot! Even I wasn’t in high school the year he graduated!

     I stopped to chat with the guys dressed like Miami Vice and asked where they got the duds, who was Crockett, and who was Tubbs?

     They had no idea what I was talking about.  They said they’d just Google’d 1980s garb, then went to the dollar store in Hachinohe and picked the stuff up.  Uh, oh! When did I get so old?

     Kane and his wife did a great job setting up, too.  He’d printed out pictures from the movie Iron Eagle (the movie us Viper pilots love to hate).  Best of all, he had Top Gun on in the background.  I remember when my best buddy Brian and I decided in 1986 to go see it; I thought it was another western movie.  Like so many others, that movie galvanized my desire to be a fighter pilot.  Unlike several others, I realized then that I would probably rather go home every night from work than land on a boat, so I joined the Air Force. 

     I miss the 80s.  We had a nice, sane, rational foe in the Soviet Union, not a stream of crazed Islamic terrorists.  Reagan was in charge.  Americans were flush with optimism.  MTV and video games made their debut.  We had one of the best bull market rallies in history.  Those were the days, and there’ll never be another decade quite the same.