Born in 1981

If you were born in 1981, you came in on the cusp of the decade that the country would later either celebrate or deplore with equal passion. Reagan was in the White House cutting taxes and the national mood was assertively optimistic. MTV launched on August 1st with "Video Killed the Radio Star" and the music business would never be the same—now your band needed a look, and the look mattered as much as the song.

"Bette Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes was the song of the year. Raiders of the Lost Ark had everyone at the theater twice. On March 30th, Reagan was shot outside the Washington Hilton and emerged from it with his approval ratings higher than before, which seemed to confirm some essential charm.

The first IBM PC went on sale in August for $1,565 and the personal computing revolution moved from garages to office desks. Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman on the Supreme Court. The Pac-Man craze had moved from arcade to home—Atari's home version was under every Christmas tree.

Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings and Dan Rather were the faces of the evening news in a way no anchor would ever quite be again. A first-class stamp was eighteen cents. The economy was in a rough recession but the rhetoric of prosperity was already louder than the reality, and sometimes that's how culture works—you sell the vision and the numbers follow.