A few weeks ago, I began writing an amazing post about growing up in the 70’s full of anecdotes, trivia and just FUN …but I lost all of it.

After consulting my friend Rosemary with back and forth exchanges full of WHAT THE HELL DID I DO’S?? and whimsical giphy’s (because giphy’s are whimsical!), it was decided that my post was gone.

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In the graveyard. Of my mind.

So here is what I can remember from the mid-late ’70s through the early ’80s.

 

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Nothing takes me back to the ’70s like the smell of new carpet. That’s because the carpet was to the ’70s what hardwood is to now. The carpet was good, the carpet was soft, the carpet was comforting. Now, all you see when couples are house hunting on House Hunters is:

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OH MY GOD IS THAT …CARPET?

I hope like HELL there is hardwood under that …carpet.

Great Linda, another house with …carpet. CAN WE GET ANOTHER REALTOR??

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My knees were scraped, bruised and banged up for most of the ’70s and into the early ’80s with carpet all over our floors. I can’t imagine how bad I would’ve looked if we had hardwood floors.

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In 1977, I desperately wanted my parents to buy us a Chevrolet Vega. While my friends were plotting ways to get purple Kool-Aid served at lunch, I would sit on my backyard metal swing set and plot ways to get a Vega.

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When it wasn’t an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.

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What seven-year-old wouldn’t want that beaut sitting in their driveway? To a child whose dream it was to be the fourth Charlie’s Angel, this was way cooler than the car that was actually sitting in my driveway:

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Between my brother and me, we amassed a collection of plastic sports helmets one summer that would have impressed the Football Hall of Fame. Not actual helmets, though — miniature plastic replicas of the ones worn by NFL superstars at the time.

This you need to know about me: I never loved professional football more than I did in the mid-to-late ’70s, and I still have no idea why.

Maybe it was the thrill of finding a new-to-me football helmet in a gumball machine at the restaurants we’d stop at after Sunday drives.

Maybe it was because I was what they used to call a tomboy and wanted to be one of the guys.

Maybe it was because I needed a reason to wrestle my little brother to the ground.

All I know is that I knew every single NFL team logo from the ’70s like I was getting paid to memorize them.

To this day, I still say to my husband, wait, Houston isn’t the Oilers anymore?

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Grease had come out the summer I turned eight, but it didn’t really take on a life of its own in my neighborhood until around 1980 or ’81. That was the summer Grease was LIVE in Bennington Heights daily from 10 a.m. until dusk.

I wrote before about how I still hold a grudge over never getting to play Sandy, WHICH DUH, I WAS THE OBVIOUS CHOICE, here. I won’t drag you into neighborhood politics.

But I was robbed.

That’s all I’ll say.

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Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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In 1977, our family moved back to Ohio, where I was born and lived my first two years, from the Chicago suburbs. I vaguely remember a farewell party the night before at a neighbor’s house, where the kids were once again shuffled upstairs so the adults could drink, eat shrimp dip, and say things like SHIT and DAMN. It might be a sweeping generalization, but the boomers really did know how to party.

How do I know SHIT and DAMN were repeated on a loop? Because someone had the brilliant idea to audio tape the whole thing as a keepsake of my parents’ wild and crazy Illinois lives.

And the soundtrack of the evening? Saturday Night Fever.

To this day, when I hear A Fifth of Beethoven, I’m back in our little red Granada, chugging down the Indiana Tollway toward Ohio.

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I need you to watch the above video. I’ll wait.

First, the guy who wants to liven up the party is Nat before he becomes Nat from Beverly Hills, 90210.

Second, clearly Mr. Microphone was invented by someone who did not have children.

Third, this was probably one of the greatest inventions known to humankind when you are eight years old.

Because when you are eight, this is the perfect platform for making your insignificant voice feel very, very important.

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HEY MOM, I’M TAKING A POOP IN THE DOWNSTAIRS BATHROOM!

CAN YOU PLEASE GIVE ME SOME TOILET PAPER?

OH NO! I THINK I CLOGGED THE TOILET.

AGAIN.

AW COOL! MOM COME HERE! MY POOP IS SHAPED LIKE A BOWLING PIN!

 

Good times.

 

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Dr. Scholl’s were all the rage. You had to have them, and if you didn’t get hit in the head with one at some point, you weren’t really alive in the ’70s.

I remember clanking around on a family day trip in them, my toes sliding forward and scraping the pavement, leaving little hematomas on each one.

Do I remember what we were actually doing that day as a family? I do not.

But I remember how my shoes made me feel, and that seems to be the part that stuck.

And now they’re back, apparently, going for 75 dollars and up on Etsy.

 

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Did you ever rip Stretch Armstrong’s arms off so that you could see the jelly inside that made him stretch?

You didn’t?

Oh.

Never mind.

 

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The movie Jaws made me decide I would never go into a body of water again, except for my local pool, for the rest of the late ’70s.

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This post could also be titled:

When I liked Star Wars

 

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Guess what? I am an “OG,” as they say, when it comes to Star Wars movies, trivia, memorabilia, and the like.

You’re probably starting to feel like you don’t really know who I am anymore, right?

The truth is, I don’t remember much about Star Wars, or the sequels, or the prequels, or whatever else people are calling them now.

All I remember is wanting to marry Mark Hamill (get in line, Peter Criss), and sitting on my neighbor’s porch, fully committed to a very intense disagreement over a Princess Leia figurine that was, in my mind, both valuable and extremely rare.

I am fairly sure those things are worth a fortune now.

But then I wouldn’t be writing this blog.

Aren’t you glad I don’t like Star Wars anymore?