Thursday, November 15, 2007

May Early 80s Hair Style Never Darken Our Doors Again

I know, I’m four days late on the Junior High Yearbook Photo-a-thon. Gimme a break, I had stuff to say about strip clubs and other forms of public nudity. I’m a busy, busy man.

But now it is time to break down the walls of pain and shed some light on the dark places of the world. Scans from the “Jaguar ’81” yearbook, straight off the glass of the scanner, baby. Valley View Intermediate, Pleasant Hill, California All hail!

In the interest of fairness, I’ll start out with a shot with me in it. Try and pick out our hero! (That’d be me!) Hint: Very short. Very blond. Somewhat dorky. (Yes, I know, there are a fair number of folks in this picture that fit that bill, but give it a go)

Front row. Fifth from the left with the plaid flannel shirt on. Yes, they spelled my name wrong in the caption. Bastards! And look at that kid fourth from the right on the front row! It’s hard to even believe that he and I are the same species, never long the same age. Dude had a MUSTACHE! In 8th grade! They must have been putting growth hormones in his Grape Nuts when he was a toddler.

OK, onward, to the goofy bits!

This one was apparently taken at a dance. They used to have school dances right after school and only once or twice at night. So you’d get out of class and then go straight to a dance. Which struck me as bad tactical planning. “How can I get my hair to flip back and feather PERFECTLY, if I can’t have access to my Remington Pro Series hair dryer?!”

What you can’t quite make out in this photo is that poor blond girl wearing the overalls is also sporting headgear for her braces. You can see the shadow of the wire cutting across her chin, poor dear. Yes, she went to a dance in junior high wearing her headgear. I’m pretty sure she still hasn’t forgiven her parents for that trick. This was also back in the days when Kool and the Gang had hit singles. And not just hit singles, but MONSTER hit singles. You couldn’t walk out of a building without that horn riff smacking you in the face.

I choose this next one not only because the hair on these ladies is spectacular, but the lipstick on the girl on the left scares me pretty badly.

I don’t know the name of the girl on the left with the moose-like lips, but the girl on the right is Francie Maguire. I have almost zero recollection of her. Short nerdly boys who played D&D on the weekends didn’t get to talk to “women” like this.

There was this strange little “store” the student council people ran in between classes. You could buy paper and pencils and at lunch, chocolate milk or these frozen Carnation milk shake things. Those were tasty. Kind of a weird thing, but it was usually staffed by my two favorite girls, Beth Portello and Monika Heinritz.

As you can see, they were also the favorites of a number of boys. That’s Beth in the background on the left and Monika mugging for the camera on the right. Who the hell cares who the guys are? Seriously, I don’t.

Oh man, did I ever have the HUGEST crush on Monika.

Can you blame me? She’s adorable! Although now that I’m in my forties, I have to say that I don’t really find her attractive in the same way I did back in 1981. As I’ve noted before with my youthful crushes, I consider this a good thing. It’d be creepy if I still found her hot, you know? Ew. You can pretty much bank on a story later this month talking about her. Oy vey, the drama!

Finally, we have the pièce de résistance for this round.

The lovely (in her own way) Linda Dowling. Lots and lots of guys were very hot for her, but she never did it for me. Although, she has 1981 fashion and 1981 as a lifestyle completely NAILED with this ensemble. Hair feathered to within a millimeter of its life, bad plastic-y iron-on tee-shirt depicting a marijuana as palm trees motitf and a caption that reads “Touch of Grass,” and pants that are SO tight she can’t even get them buttoned up properly. Just flat out spectacular.

I am out of words. 

1. Oh how I can relate to wearing a head gear to school. Heaven knows why I didn’t take the thing off the second I stepped foot on the bus. Gotta give that girl props for wearing it to the school dance.

   Posted by Anitra  on  11/15/07  at  03:13 PM

2. Here’s what I don’t get: Seems like all the kids who with braces back then HAD to wear headgear (sometimes just at night).

   Both my older children have had or have braces. No headgear. I wonder why.

   Can I get some headgear for them?

   I feel like I need to embarrass them even more.

   Posted by jon  on  11/15/07  at  03:18 PM

3. You post stuff from the 80’s just to frighten me, huh.

   Posted by michael  on  11/15/07  at  04:53 PM

4. Michael

   Ha! Really, I snorted.

   Posted by jon  on  11/15/07  at  04:56 PM

5. Hi Jon… I’ve actually asked my dentist about this very thing, cos kids don’t wear headgears anymore and it just seems unfair that I had to. These kids today, they have it good! Well, the dentist said that dentistry in general has evolved a lot since those days and they’re no longer necessary. I’ll ship you my old headgear so that you can show your kids what an ancient dental contraption from the middle ages looks like. hee hee.

   Posted by Anitra  on  11/16/07  at  11:41 AM

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