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1980s

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Bring back yearning!

Is romance a lost art? Some might say it is. Many people find dating apps to be an impersonal nightmare, and meeting up in-person is not always much better. Still, love connections do happen every day despite the odds! But is there courtship? Is there chivalry? Has everything gone to complete hell since the invention of social media?

Some experts say that romance isn't dead, just different, and that's a good way of looking at it. But there's definitely something nostalgic about the old-fashioned ways of our parents and grandparents. When you met each other in real life, dated properly, took each other to a sock hop, and couldn't instantly go find someone else the second you got bored.

One woman recently shared a fascinating and nostalgic document she received from her grandpa: He had documented every single date with his wife for over 60 years.

people on a date in the 60sIf he wanted to, he would. Giphy

The caption, shared by the granddaughter, Kayla, read: "When girls can barely get a good morning text but my grandpa documented every memory and date he ever had w my grandma for 60 years."

What follows is an extremely well-organized log of every date or key memory between the pair. A couple of things stand out from the early years of Jim and Kay's love story:

  • The title of the document is "The Beginning of a Wonderful Relationship." Pure romance.
  • They met on December 5, 1969 at a collegiate dance.
  • They hung out A LOT in the early days. In the first month of dating, they went on around 15 dates!
  • Jim refers to himself in the document as "Jim," which took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out. I kept wondering, who's this Jim guy?!
  • There are no NSFW details—that's not how that generation rolls — but you can read between the lines. "Kay came over to Jim's place before she went to work." Alright, I see you, Grandpa and Grandma.
  • It is pages and pages and pages long. No memory was too minute to leave out. In the video, just the year 1970 goes on for over five pages.
  • In June of 1970, Jim proposes, and the story is pure gold:

"Jim picked up Kay after work and went to the 'Den of Times' for drinks. There, Jim proposed to Kay asking if she 'wanted to marry him.' She said she had 'wanted' to marry him for some time but that he needed to ask another question. When he said 'will you marry me? she accepted!"

Watch Kayla's touching video here:


@kaylastipsits1

my grandma is one lucky gal #fyp #foryou #dating #love #relationship #stl #silversprings #stlouis #missouri

Commenters swooned, sobbed, and in some cases, were super jealous of the love on display in this document.

Over 8 million people have viewed the video on TikTok and we're all in agreement: The bar has been raised.

"may this love ATTACK me," wrote one user.

"Now I'm mad at my husband"

“Made spaghetti, went grocery shopping” SOBBING

"MAY THIS LOVE FIND ME"

"They just don’t make them like this anymore"

"We get caught up in so many modern day dating rules….'don’t make yourself too available'. Notice how they spent almost every day together immediately after meeting for the first time [When you know you know]"

The most beautiful part of the journal, to me, is the pure mundanity of it. So many dates involved them going shopping for groceries, cooking dinner at home, or watching TV. The fact that it was all done together over the course of many decades, and Jim considered every instance worthy of writing down, speaks volumes about their love.

Reading through what's visible of the document, I didn't see any instances of "picnic in a rowboat on a lake at sunset" or "candlelit dinner at the top of a skyscraper." It's just all so normal and ordinary. And I think it paints an amazing picture of what love really is: Finding a person to live life with.

I'd love to see how the pages of this journal evolved over the decades. In any case, not only is this journal an amazing testament to true love, it's an incredible thing for Kayla to inherit. It's the entire story of her Grandpa and Grandma, from the very beginning, without a single detail left out. And it's a good blueprint for her to keep if and when she tries to find her own life partner.

TikTok about '80s childhood is a total Gen X flashback.

As a Gen X parent, it's weird to try to describe my childhood to my kids. We're the generation that didn't grow up with the internet or cell phones, yet are raising kids who have never known a world without them. That difference alone is enough to make our 1980s childhoods feel like a completely different planet, but there are other differences too that often get overlooked.

How do you explain the transition from the brown and orange aesthetic of the '70s to the dusty rose and forest green carpeting of the '80s if you didn't experience it? When I tell my kids there were smoking sections in restaurants and airplanes and ashtrays everywhere, they look horrified (and rightfully so—what were we thinking?!). The fact that we went places with our friends with no quick way to get ahold of our parents? Unbelievable.



One day I described the process of listening to the radio, waiting for my favorite song to come on so I could record it on my tape recorder, and how mad I would get when the deejay talked through the intro of the song until the lyrics started. My Spotify-spoiled kids didn't even understand half of the words I said.

And '80s hair? With the feathered bangs and the terrible perms and the crunchy hair spray? What, why and how?

In some ways, that era was simpler. We weren't bombarded with information and opinions about every issue in the world 24/7 and had the freedom to just be kids. At the same time, I personally have no desire to go back. (My straight, fine hair was not made for the '80s.)

However, one dad is bringing full-on nostalgia to millions of Gen Xers with a viral TikTok he made about sharing his '80s childhood with his 8-year-old son. Justin H (who goes by @shadyraro on TikTok) included photos and descriptions of things all '80s kids will recognize and it's like hopping into a time machine.

Like, the unwound cassette tape struggle was genuinely real. Grab a pencil, start winding and pray. "The A-Team"? Totally. Streetlight curfew? Yep.

@shadyraro

The 80’s was the best decade #80s #80skid #oldschool #genx #parents #funny #family #foryou #fyp

The video has been viewed more than 10 million times this week, with commenters neck-deep in their feelings about their childhood flashbacks.

"I miss them days, technology has taken away so much," wrote one commenter.

"Miss the 80s era but unfortunately us kids were the remote control," wrote another. (So true. Changing the channel was exercise.)

"The 80's cannot be explained...it was an experience...a complete vibe all its own...and if you missed it I'm so sorry for you!" wrote another.

And if you feel like there were some things missing, no worries. There's a Part Two:

@shadyraro

The 80’s was the best decade Part 2 #80s #80skid #oldschool #genx #parents #funny #family #foryou #fyp

The ashtray in the back of the car seat! The phone booth! The Walkman! The overhead projector. So my childhood. I can practically taste the Tang and Twinkies.

Kids today will never know the ugly beauty of growing up in the '80s, but someday they'll have their own tales to tell their kids that they'll look on with fondness and nostalgia. "We used to spend hours building things with little digital blocks in Minecraft…"

There's never been anything like the '80s and there never will be again. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Justin H.


This article originally appeared on 05.21.22

From Your Site Articles
Curiosity Show/YouTube

The Ames window trick.

Optical illusions are universally beloved for how they trick our brains and blow our minds. There's a reason we enjoy magic shows and Escher paintings and are mesmerized by fake oases in the desert. We love seeing things that bend our perceptions of reality, and the science behind the magic always proves fascinating as well.


The Ames window is a pretty well-known optical illusion, but it's always cool to see. When spun, the angled window appears to oscillate back and forth instead of spin all the way around. But this video adds a twist that makes the effect even more mindbending—our brains simply can't process objective reality mixed with an optical illusion.


The YouTube channel Curiosity Show explains the science of the illusion and gives a DIY demonstration for making your own Ames window. But wait until the pen gets taped to the window and spun. This is some real-life magic right here. Mind. Blown.


This article originally appeared on 02.21.20

It's math that's simple enough for a third grader, but it seems wrong no matter how you calculate it.

Time is a strange phenomenon. It speeds up when we want it to slow down and drags when we wish it would go by faster. Sometimes it feels like we blink and a decade has gone by. Cue "the days are long, but the years are short," "time flies when you're having fun," and all the other time cliches that feel 100% true.

Of course, those truisms are all about our perception of time, not time itself. Time ticks by in a never-changing rhythm of seconds, minutes, hours, days and years, perfectly metered and measured. But it sure doesn't feel that way, which is why a simple math equation an average third grader can do has grown adults pulling out their calculators to make sure it's correct.


The equation in question comes from meme that reads "1981 and 2024 are as far apart as 1981 and 1938."

Yep, it's correct. The math checks out, no matter how many times you plug the numbers into the calculator. So why does it feel so wrong?

Again, time is a tricky thing. Those of us who were alive in 1981 remember how far back 1938 seemed to us at that time, and there's simply no way that distance is what 1981 is to us now. It seems impossible.

Part of the problem is that, at least for the middle-agers among us, the 80s still feels like they happened 20 years ago, not 43. That's simply how time perception works as we age.

But that's not all of it. As some people have pointed out, there were certainly major changes in both time periods, but the hugely significant cultural changes from 1938 to 1981 were more visible in many ways than most changes we've seen since then. Yes, technology exploded near the turn of the millennium, but once the internet and laptops and smartphones hit the scene, tech advancements have mostly been a matter of degree—better, smaller, lighter, faster, more efficient, more intuitive—in fairly steady increments and not so much dramatic jumps.

From 1938 to 1981, we saw huge leaps, from tiny black-and-white television to full-color cable television, from the first transatlantic passenger flight to sending humans to the moon on space shuttles, from switchboards and party lines to cell phone technology, from human computers to PCs.

We also saw clothing styles change drastically from one decade to the next during that time period in a way that we haven’t really seen in the past 40 years. Same with architecture and home designs. The mid-20th century saw the birth of rock n' roll, the Civil Rights Movement and the shift to women into the workforce. Again, huge leaps.

Wars also defined generations more in the mid-20th century than in the decades since, from WWII to the Vietnam War to the Cold War. It’s not that we haven’t had wars since 1981, but the direct impact of those wars on American life has not been as notable as those previous wars were.

Then again, it’s possible that much of the difference in feel is simply our perception of life now vs. then. Do the years since 1981 seem shorter simply because we’ve lived them, whereas most of us weren’t alive for a good chunk of the 1938 to 1981 time period and only learned it as “history”?

Hard to say, but one thing that’s clear is that people do not like the way this math feels, as evidenced by the comments people left on the post.

“Fitz is cancelled. Feeling triggered here. Lol”

“I did the math too many times because I don’t want to believe this.”

“As someone born in 1981 I really dislike this.”

“Shut your mouth. Those are fighting words! “

“I honestly did nothing to you! Like why?”

“They're not far apart. You're far apart."

It certainly will be interesting to see how the next 43 years feel for the people who live through it vs. 1981 until now.