Born in 1984

If you were born in 1984, you arrived in the year that George Orwell had warned about, which turned out to be less dystopian and more neon-colored than anyone anticipated. Reagan won re-election with forty-nine states in the most lopsided electoral victory since FDR, "Morning in America" working exactly as intended. *Ghostbusters* and *Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom* and *Beverly Hills Cop* were the summer—pure entertainment machinery at its peak.

Prince's *Purple Rain* was the album, the film, the whole strange thing. "When Doves Cry" from every car radio. The Apple Macintosh launched in January with that Super Bowl commercial directed by Ridley Scott—the hammer thrown at the screen, Big Brother shattered—and personal computing suddenly had a face and a personality.

Van Halen and Bruce Springsteen's *Born in the U.S.A.

* were the sounds of arena rock and its complicated patriotism. The Los Angeles Olympics were boycotted by the Soviets and the US dominated, Carl Lewis winning four golds, Mary Lou Retton sticking a perfect ten on the vault, the country erupting in red, white, and blue. The crack cocaine epidemic was beginning in cities from New York to Los Angeles, a catastrophe still in its early chapters.

The Trivial Pursuit board game was in every living room. Leg warmers. Fingerless gloves.

The synthesizer. The decade was fully, gloriously, tragically itself.