Born in 1983

If you were born in 1983, you came into a country riding the back of Reagan's "morning in America" optimism even as darker currents ran underneath. The economy was recovering from recession, Michael Jackson was moonwalking across the Motown 25 TV special in a single sequined glove, and the decade had found its groove. Return of the Jedi and Flashdance and Risky Business were at the multiplex.

"Every Breath You Take" by the Police was inescapable. The AIDS crisis was deepening—the word had been coined two years before, but this was the year the scale of what was coming became impossible to minimize, even as the administration largely looked away. M*A*S*H's series finale was watched by 106 million people—the largest television audience in history to that point, a nation saying goodbye to a show that had outlasted the war it was set in.

The Cabbage Patch Kids craze hit Christmas like a riot—parents literally brawling in toy store aisles for the dolls. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. Ronald Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative—Star Wars, the press called it—and the Cold War got a new, expensive, fantastical wrinkle.

The cordless phone was becoming affordable and people were walking around their houses talking, which felt like science fiction. The country was loud and confident and not yet fully recounting its costs.