Thirty years ago, Michael J. Fox was travelling 30 years into the past in the first Back to the Future movie, while the second installment of the still-well-known movie series took place in 2015, 30 years later.
It seems like everywhere I look lately, that number keeps popping up, probably because I’m now officially less than a week away from turning 30.
The year was 1985, and it was a pretty epic year, even aside from the Back to the Future movie franchise starting out, and Jem and the Holograms making their first TV appearance. I can brag to my husband that my birth year was the same year as Wrestlemania 1 – wrestlers like Hulk Hogan (who has now been blanketed in controversy), Mr. T, and Roddy Piper (who passed away only about a month ago) took part in the event.
Even more exciting, was that the first Nintendo System was made available in North America, something that had a pretty big impact on my childhood, given the fact that I had three brothers who all played it, and one that has since gone on to pursue a career in the video game industry.
As for news, the Titanic wreck was discovered in 1985, and scientists also found a “hole” in the ozone layer over Antarctica.
In the music scene, Madonna was a huge hit, and Guns N’ Roses had formed as a band. Blockbuster Video opened its first rental outlet in the fall, and has now pretty much all but disappeared from cities and towns everywhere.
The first no-smoking sign also showed up 30 years ago.
As I was searching through Google (because that’s clearly where I learned all these “facts”), I came across a screen shot of Microsoft Windows 1.0 – and although there are many ways to gauge the passing of time, I do feel like my generation is in a unique situation, having witnessed one of the quickest changes ever when it comes to digital technologies.
From Nintendo, all the way to the WiiU that now sits in my own children’s room, the advances I’ve seen so far, and have had to learn across my three decades of life, have been pretty huge.
Dial-up Internet is something that my sons certainly wouldn’t understand since they are already baffled by the idea that not all restaurants have a secure Wi-Fi connection for their iPads. As a side-note, I also discovered that the first dot com was introduced the same year I was born – if that doesn’t make a person feel old, I don’t know what does.
Along with the mass cultural and technological changes that have taken place, I think I’ve had a pretty successful 30 years of life so far. A happy childhood, a successful teenage life (since I clearly made it out alive), completing my post-secondary education, followed by getting a job before even graduating (which I’m still working at), getting married, and having two children are all pretty huge highlights.
Although I had joked with my husband that the best 30th birthday gift he could give me would be moving into our new house (the second one that we build ourselves), I know it’s an impossibility at this stage, since I’m only expecting the walls to start going up this week. But, that only means he will have to wrack his brain over the next few days to come up with something even better.
