Hijacked!

Aw...today my blog was hijacked by my dh (dear hubby). Yep, it's been 24 years since we said "I do". I can truthfully say that my mind feels the same as back then, but my body says, "whoa, what happened?".

1982....What a different world we lived in. We drove a 1976 Vega. EVERYONE had permed hair (I escaped that look for my wedding day, but succumbed to fashion pressure by Christmas) and wore high-waisted shorts and jeans (perfect daughter would shudder). We left those silly hip-huggers behind in the 70's. Hubby had a three-piece suit, because it was the Reagan years. My favorite skirts were prairie skirts, and I see they are making a comeback.

Our wedding day was rainy, but the sun came out in time for the "I do's". I remember weighing myself that day and at 124 pounds thinking, "I'm so fat". Sigh. Someone wrote with shaving cream on the Vega stuff about "love and marriage" and we drove off.

We were such kids. I have often said, "What were my parents THINKING???" letting me marry such a boy. We were still in college (right there, um, yeah, red flag???) so suddenly we both got much better grades. In fact, I remember he handed me his last paper page by page, I typed it as I got it (nothing as luxurious as a personal computer back then...I was very familiar with all forms of white-out), and then he ran to slide it under his prof's door just in the nick of time. All this so he wouldn't have to write it on his honeymoon. Nowadays, perfect daughter could just type, and send it to her professor's in box, all without leaving her dorm and her perfect computer.

We went to Cozumel with our last $800 in the world. There's some mature thinking. There were no credit cards back then, and ATM's were a new technology and few and far between. Coming home from Mexico, we suddenly realized in the plane that we wouldn't have the $50 or so to get our car out of long-term parking--because we had $7.00 between us! No worries, they took a check and we went straight from the airport to blow that last seven bucks on a new movie we had heard a lot about. It was something called "ET" and it was really neat. And yes, we could both go to the movies for $7.00 back in 1982.

The 1980's were the dawn of all the new technology that has changed our lives so much. No one I knew had a VCR in 1982, but by 1983, my parents had one that we often borrowed. It had a pop-up feature to put the tape in. Cool! (The challenge was finding a place that rented video tapes!) The first video camera my dad owned weighed about 25 pounds and in 1984 we captured many shots of perfect daughter when she was a perfect baby. At UT, in 1982, I was instructed NOT to type my papers on a computer. The dot-matrix printers were hard to read (the "g" was all above the line) and professors hated them. I fed quarters to the electric typewriters at the Academic Center instead. For exercise, expensive shoes were just coming to the forefront. I started aerobics with Jane Fonda and in bare feet (but with chic leg warmers!).

A lot has changed in 24 years, but I'm still married to the boy I met on campus in October 1981. No congratulations are needed, because I'm congratulating myself.