Yale-Approved

“Come on, it’s fun,” I said, mostly listening to every 80s song I ever loved streaming in the background. “If you had to teach a class, what would it be?”

Skylar groaned. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“I don’t know,” her boyfriend said, trying to make a good impression. “This is hard.”

Alexandra stared out the window–either searching for an escape route or silently willing the waiter to arrive with the food before she had to make actual conversation.

I knew I’d sound like an 80s broken record if I asked again, so I stated what seemed obvious.

“I know what I’d teach–80s pop culture.”

Right on cue, Mick Jagger chimed in from the speakers, “You can’t always get what you want.”

Exactly! It’s like Mick read my mind.

“Take these lyrics. Now that’s practical advice. We got all our wisdom from songs.”

Skylar, a songwriting major, started to come to life: “They wrote lyrics like conversations back then.”

I lit up. “Yes! That’s exactly it. Did you learn that in one of your songwriting classes?”

Maybe…She wouldn’t give in that easily. But the boyfriend said he’d take my class.

And Alexandra all but hired me when she said, “My friend’s applying to Yale, and for the supplemental essays, they asked the same question.

If you could teach a class, what class would it be?

I beamed. (And secretly said, “Sweet!” and made that reverse fist pump we used to do. That was our eighties slang.) If it’s good enough for Yale…

Before Google and AI, There was Pop Culture

You have to understand we had a set of expired encyclopedias, an unabridged dictionary that took up just as much space as the microwave in the center island, and the rest? We learned from pop culture.

Urban legends ran rampant without Snopes. It was like the smoking and non-smoking sections on airplanes. We were all breathing the same air anyway.

Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight”? Of course, we believed he wrote it because someone watched his cousin drown and didn’t help. (Completely false, by the way, but we didn’t know that.)

My daughters immediately asked, “Wait…If Phil Collins saw it happen, why didn’t he save his cousin?”

You didn’t expect us to question these things, did you?

We all “knew” Mikey from the Life cereal commercial died after mixing Pop Rocks and Coke. We believed it. We weren’t fact-checkers – we were story collectors.

“How did you hear this stuff without social media?” Skylar asked, realizing she was stuck with this conversation, or was I detecting interest?

“A friend who had older siblings told you. You’d tell someone else.”

I caught the same look in my daughters’ eyes–the same one I must’ve had when Mom tried to explain telephone party lines.

The Big Syllabus (With Big Hair Comes Bigger Character Traits):

I came home and couldn’t stop thinking about my syllabus.

With Yale at the ready, and Skylar’s boyfriend on the waiting list, I’ve got to deliver.

The poofy prom dresses? The shoulder pads (but no one wore them better than Michael Jackson in Thriller)? And, of course. The boombox.

It had to be big. The bigger, the better. But no matter the size, we all faced the same enormous problem when it came time to record songs off the radio.

We’d sit there, fingers hovering, holding our breath, until it was time to press play and record at the exact same time.

Miss it? You waited hours for your song to come back around again. And even then, the DJ would always talk over the ending.

Still, it taught us patience.

Just like we heard Mick Jagger warn us, “You can’t always get what you want.”

And maybe because of our limitations, we were more resourceful. When our tapes got eaten, we performed emergency surgery — with a pencil. We threaded them back to life.

With patience came forgiveness. Like the time my sister taped over the only recording of our school play. Had it not been for her, we could have a copy of me singing “Ribbons Down My Back” as Mrs. Malloy in Hello, Dolly!

(I forgive her for erasing the evidence.)

Character and Strength Braided Together Like a Pink and Green Barrette

And if we learned nothing else, we had character. You needed lots of it to wear pink and green braided barrettes with little alligators clipped at the top.

Green corduroys were a thing in my closet, I’m afraid. Plenty to wear along with my Kiss Me I’m Irish pin (everyone’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day).

And strength. We went to concerts and basketball games without earplugs. (I don’t think they’d been invented yet?)

We didn’t get sick as much because of all the penicillin we ate from the mold on our bread.

And when the milk went bad, we rang our neighbor’s bell and asked to borrow some. Same with butter or bread. They’d even lend us their plate (which always ended up in our cabinet.)

And just like those mismatched plates, we had imagination.

Lessons from the Microwave and the Milk

The microwave was supposedly radioactive, but that didn’t stop us from placing it on the center island, right next to the oven on one side and the built-in indoor grill on the other. It was the only place we had room for it. (Much better than it’s original home on top of the dryer in the laundry room.)

My sister would stare at the back of it while she ate, dreaming of a new home for her Brussels Sprouts. When the microwave finally broke and we moved it we discovered where all her unwanted food went. It was like the Island of the Misfit Toys from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

This taught us to adjust and adapt — to make room for things, even if we don’t know what to do with them. Somewhere along the way, we became who we are, not just because of the fun stuff, but because of all the awkward, broken, ill-fitting things that taught us to pin it up, hairspray it, and move on.

Dreaming Up New Inventions and Finding Warmth

Because above all else we had imagination.

Mom would turn the thermostat down to 64 every night. I’d follow her up the stairs and say, “One day there’s going to be a way to set a timer so the heat comes on before we wake up.”

And she said, “You can invent that.”

And I thought, How hard can it be? It’s just an alarm clock for the heater.

Until then, I’d change into my uniform under the covers, and as soon as I’d brush my teeth, run downstairs to stand in front of the open oven door. Mom always had it ready for me. My sister would be sprawled across the dining room heater vent underneath the window.

We always came up with new ways of doing things because there were no instant answers to our questions. We came up with games as well. Charlie’s Angels was a favorite. We never had three girls, but we played anyway. We just imagined the third Angel, and somehow, I always ended up being Sabrina.

Course Evaluation: Rate Professor Stephanie’s 80s Pop Culture Class

Every class ends with an evaluation. So here’s yours:

Do you think the stories were big enough?
Scale: No—A walkman belongs in a museum to Yes—Bring on the boombox, baby!

Because of this course, do you now wish we were living in the 80s?
Scale: No—Spare me the embarrassment to Yes—Moldy bread was our penicillin and we survived

Were we more creative in the 80s than we are now?
Scale: No—Why imagine it when I can look it up or fast forward to the good parts? to Yes—Inventing alarm clocks for heaters is brilliant

Do you now have “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” singing repeatedly in your head?
Scale: No—DJ talking over the ending ruins everything to Yes—Emergency tape surgery with a pencil saves the day

Do you want to get up and spontaneously dance?
Scale: No—Sleeping on heater vents was survival to Yes—Rocking pink and green barrettes with alligators took courage

Do you think the professor was qualified to be teaching this course?
Scale: No—She wouldn’t even make a good Professor Sabrina to Yes—Honorary Doctorate from Yale here we come!

What are the takeaways that you will carry forward in your life because of this course?
Scale: No—Anyone can hide their Brussels sprouts under the microwave to Yes—I’m going to spontaneously ring my neighbor’s bell right now!

How likely are you to recommend this course to your peers?
Scale: No—Get a perm and cry about it to Yes—Hairspray it and figure it out, works every time

For extra credit: Write a short-answer essay on what you would have liked to have seen taught. (aka, back to reality: Comment below)

If this kind of conversation is good enough for Yale and those of us raised on 80s pop culture, it’s good enough for those of us still rocking our 80s music and big dreams.

The professor might show up to class in her prom dress.