If You Still Have These 4 Things From The '80s In Your House, You're More Nostalgic Than You Realize
melissamn | Shutterstock Analog. Even the sound of the word is cumbersome, physical, laborious, and it was. Today, we have an entire 1980s era office and home entertainment system in our pocket. We call it a smartphone, but to do the same tasks in the 80s, we would require a couple of separate rooms full of specialized equipment. From photography to radio to how we keep track of our social contacts, the 1980s required a lot of equipment that might seem outdated throwbacks to a bygone era.
If you grew up in the 80s, there's a good chance a few pieces of the decade are still quietly living in your house, even if you don't think of yourself as sentimental. Maybe it's something you threw away or something that makes you feel weirdly safe when you see it. If you still have even one of these four things around, it ight mean you're holding onto the 80s a lot more than you realize.
If you still have these four things from the '80s in your house, you're more nostalgic than you realize:
1. Framed photos on the wall
Couples counselor Mary Kay Cocharo, like many contemporary families, says there’s honestly not much left in her house from the '80s. But one thing in her home from the 1980s that is very special is a beautiful framed picture of her twin daughters. They were born in 1981, and their birth made the '80s a cherished time indeed.
2. A clock radio
Photo by Airon J on Unsplash
Believe it or not, life coach Ronnie Ann Ryan still has the clock radio she got at work in 1985. Ryan says, "I love that thing, and it still plays the radio to wake me up. It was a promotional item for the sales department. It actually has the original sticker on it that says, 'Genuine Simulated Wood'. How hilarious is that? And it still works great for being forty years old!"
3. A Rolodex
Therapist Dr. Gloria Brame invites us to recall how the Rolodex was the ultimate business person's networking friend. Think you have all your contacts in your phone? You cannot imagine how many cards and scribbled notes you could stuff into your Rolodex back in the day. The more cards, the more successful you seemed because you clearly were tuned into all the right people.
The Rolodex defined '80s business culture at a time when the noun "network" was just beginning to turn into the verb "networking". Having a Rolodex on your desk meant you were in the know and well-connected, possibly with important people. You curated your contacts for professional advancement. It made you feel unique because you could reach out to your important contacts at will.
Meanwhile, the contacts who became unimportant could be yanked out of the rotating card file and replaced with new cards. Each new card flaunted better connections. For full disclosure, Dr. Brame still has her 1980s Rolodex but barely remembers any of the people in it.
4. Old-school photo albums
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Dr. Brame also remembers that one of her favorite pastimes as a girl was looking through all her mother's photo albums — the kind from the 1980s that spilled photos when you took them off the shelf. "They amazed me how they were filled with people I never met, relatives unknown to me, and high school friends of my parents whose names I'd never heard. They all looked so quaint and old-fashioned in the pics. It was as if they lived in another world.
Naturally, I grew up to have photo albums of my own, also filled with people my friends and relatives today would not recognize. I have a stack of big albums, mostly chronicling my teens and 20s, before there was an Internet. Now they feel like an anomaly. Actual photo albums with physical photographs neatly placed into little sticky paper corners you'd buy at the stationers.
My albums, and the millions of other albums that other 60+ folks probably store and reminisce over, represent a time when capturing moments felt sacred to family history. For many of my generation, the albums contain the only images of their parents, grandparents, and other dear ones long gone. It's more than nostalgia for us. These photos keep our pasts, and the people in them, alive."
Photographs and memories have been entwined for a few generations. Handwritten addresses and phone books have ceased to be status symbols. Those transistor radios still pick up the voices on the airwaves as we ping wifi signals to lost echoes in social media. Maybe one day we will have a national archive of physical family photos cross-referenced to all those contacts from the abandoned Rolodexes. While the younger generations scroll through their digital memories for the same hit of nostalgia.
Will Curtis is YourTango's expert editor. Will has over 14 years of experience as an editor covering relationships, spirituality, and human interest topics.
