What were you doing in 1989?

Wondering why my dad was not around, watchin my mom try to cope as a young mum. Dad came home from his prison stint 2 years later. He has always been there for me ever since. Love that man . Also trying to stop pissin the bed all the time . Was 4 at the time

The "Batman" movie released that year I just watched it. Entertaining film but Nicholson's joker I thought was a disappointment. It came off too "cartoonish". No one will top Heath's joker.

In 1989 I was in 8th grade during the first half of the year, then a freshman in high school starting in September.

8th grade plus the summer vacation that followed it was one of my all-time favorite time periods. That was mostly because my assigned seat in homeroom was right next to Erika, a girl from the next town over who I'd never even seen before she sat down beside me on the first day of 8th grade. It was a single, small table with two chairs, so we were only about a foot apart, and she was smoking hot; smart too (she was in the honors group).

She was the first girl I ever called on the phone just to talk to, and it wasn't long before we were talking on the phone every night for hours (fortunately it was a local call even though she lived in the next town over). She had her own phone in her room; not just an extension, but her own separate phone line with her own number. That was extremely unusual back then. I didn't know any other kid who had their own phone line.

One night in the summer of '89 I got the wild idea to go to her house. I called her at about midnight, woke her up, and told her I was coming over. I don't think she believed me, but she groggily said, "Okay." It took me probably an hour and a half to ride there on my bike; pitch dark on a country road with no break-down lane; nearly got hit by a car more than once.

I climbed through her bedroom window and stayed until dawn.

Also, we got cable TV for the first time in 1989, and our first VCR on Christmas '88. On top of that, I got both an NES and an Atari 7800 in '89, along with my second pair of Bauer hockey skates which I loved (I'd outgrown the first pair that I got in '87).

My all-time favorite arcade game (Super Punch-Out) was at Fossa's General Store and I was playing that just about every day, and I even beat Lawton's high score on it (he was known as the King of the Arcade). Plus, a new arcade opened in town in '89 which had a pool table, and that kicked ass because the only other place in town with a pool table was a bar which we were too young to go into.

"Mighty John" Marshall, my favorite DJ ever, was working at the oldies station 95.7 WWMJ and he played songs from his own record collection (playing records on the radio was unusual by '89; nearly everyone was using broadcast carts by that time), and he took requests, so I did a lot of recording off the radio, making my own "mix tapes."

One night in the summer of '89 I was in my room recording songs off the radio and I heard giggling outside my window. I looked out and it was Erika (!) and her friend Melody, who Erika was visiting in town that night. They climbed through my window and stayed for about an hour. I wish it had just been Erika. Some kids thought Melody was hot but I didn't. She always came across as annoyingly snobbish to me. What really sucks is that after they left I went to bed, and Erika told me later that they had met up with Mandy afterwards and were going to come back to my house but my light was off so they didn't. I had a crush on Mandy from kindergarten through 6th grade, so that was a gyp and a half.

Also in '89 I was hanging out with my two best friends, Corey and Tom, all the time. They were both hilarious; a constant source of entertainment even when there was nothing to do. We usually hung out at my house because there were no rules. Mom was usually gone and we did whatever we wanted to do, including walking around town after midnight and drinking beer that Corey stole from his father.

One time we took Mom's car (a tan '85 Ford Escort station wagon) for a drive all the way out to Erika's house and back (I was the one driving). My "aunt" Cindy caught us as we were pulling back into my driveway and she told Mom on us. I said, "No, we were just driving the car back and forth in the driveway," and then Mom got mad at Cindy for "making up" a story about us driving to the next town. Cindy had/has a reputation for making up stories anyway, so "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" thing worked in our favor.

Third year of high school so pretty obsessed with the music and movies of the time. Getting into mischief on occasion. First partying and drinking experiences. First love stuff 🤮

I don't remember: I was only 1 years old.

First proper job, first proper love. Listening to the music of 1989, drinking beer, learning to drive, watching great movies!

Probably jumping off my parents' couch pretending to be a Ninja Turtle and saving the world from the evil clutches of Shredder.

I also did that last week.

Working in a dead-end job, going to night school in the hopes of someday getting a job that wasn't dead-end (eventually successfully), joined a local theater company, traveled a little. Considering my family had chucked me out at 18 for no reason, I could have done a lot worse.