There's  hardly a child of the eighties who doesn't long for their youth. True, we are still young-- just entering college, hardly seasoned veterans of life-- but  the eighties had so much more to offer us. There was no Kenny G, only Kenny Rogers; and Windows 95 was foreign to those who played Agent USA on their Commodore 64 and wrote programs in BASIC. We were Material Girls who just wanted to have fun, and Lost Boys who wished we were as cool as the Coreys, Haim and Feldman. We didn't have to worry about our cars; we had big wheels to cruise around the neighborhood, bearing likenesses of ET and Night Rider's Kitt, Barbie and GI Joe. Life was so much simpler then.

 I could get up at six thirty and watch twelve uninterrupted hours of cartoon masterwork, starting with Kid Video, on to Voltron, Shirt Tales, Foofur, Thundercats (still a huge favorite), He-Man, She-Ra, a never ending parade of animated heroes and anti-heroes that culminated with the Smurfs, who, deep down in my heart, I wanted to see wiped out by Gargamel and Azrael, Smurfette in particular. And when that was through I could watch the USA Network's Cartoon Express, a stunning collection of cartoons, from Herculoids to Jabber Jaw to the Laff Olympics, where every male character was voiced by the same person. I could get lost for hours in the antics of the Monchichis, or of the Blue Falcon. Not unlike Jem, I was truly, truly, truly outrageous. I practiced my Care Bear Stare and had nightmares about the Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak. I was-- and suppose I still am-- a little human cartoon.

 I learned everything I know from television: science from 3-2-1 Contact, math from Square One, and language from the Letter People. Mr. Rogers taught me that I could never go down, never go down, never go down the drain, and that wishes don't make things come true. I know now that Morgan Freeman got his start on the Electric Company as EZ Reader. I learned how to play Gotcha Last from the Bert and Ernie clones on Nickelodeon's Pinwheel, whose theme song still eludes me-- everything after "Pinwheel, pinwheel, spinning around, look at my pinwheel and see what I've found" has become a blur. Mr. Mahuta showed me how to make pipe cleaner people and proved that it was okay to be messy sometimes. Kids Incorporated made me want to sing, and Small Wonder taught me a thing or two about robotics. I learned from Webster that a dumbwaiter can support the weight of a ten year old boy, and from Punky Brewster that it is never a good idea to hide in an abandoned refrigerator while playing Hide and Seek. I knew who Oliver North was, and exactly what happened when you pleaded the fifth, only because his trial pre-empted my regularly scheduled programs. Thanks to LeVar Burton, whom I knew long before he was Jordy LaForge, I know to take a look, it's in a book, a reading rainbow. I learned, in between cartoons on NBC, that the more you know, the better you'll feel. Schoolhouse Rock taught me that knowledge is power, and that a conjunction is used for hooking up words and phrases and clauses. I didn't even need to go to school. I had TV.

 Sesame Street was a bastion of learning in its own right for us children of the eighties. Of course, it was on before us, and it will continue on long after us, but we got it at its peak, when Snuffalupagus was still only Big Bird's invisible friend, Maria and Luis were still single, and there was no Elmo. It was from Sesame Street that I learned how to do the Pigeon from Bert and how to say "water" in Spanish. After a while I caught on that one of these things was not like the other, that one of these things just didn't belong. I used to secretly fantasize about being one of the little kids who got to lie down on the ground and form letters of the alphabet with their bodies.

 And it was from Sesame Street that I first learned about more important issues. For many of us, the passing of Mr. Hooper, the storekeeper, was our first encounter with death. We cried with Big Bird when we found out that he wasn't coming back, and we were angry with Grover at the loss. According to Jeremy Shorr, a quintessential eighties child now in his first year of college, Hooper's death affected him so deeply that he blocked it out completely. "I had met him earlier in the year," he says, "and had an autographed picture. According to my mom, I cried for a couple of days and hung the picture in the living room. Hooper and I had a special bond." He also recalls one of the most disturbing things for him in what he terms "the Mr. Hooper Incident": reruns. How can one expect to get over the death of a loved one when he comes back in summer repeats? It's little things like this that sent so many children of the eighties into therapy.

 I was fascinated with grown-up TV, too, the forbidden fruit on after eight at night. Oh, the rapture that accompanied permission to stay up an extra half an hour for Mr. Belvedere! I salivated at the chance to watch Dukes of Hazard, and schemed ways to spring Murdock from the VA hospital on the A-Team. I knew Mr. T before he got his own cartoon with the gymnasts. Mork and Mindy were my idea of the perfect family until Jonathan Winters showed up, and I was in love with Alex P. Keaton. I knew what ALF really stood for, and always wanted to take a ride in Kitt. I was scared senseless when Willis, Kimberly and Arnold were kidnapped on Diff'rent Strokes, and still make sure there are handles on the inside doors of every car I enter. I lived every story, and took a little from it.

 And TV was good for more than just cartoons and catchy theme songs. It was, after all, the primary vehicle of a distinctly eighties phenomenon-- the Atari. There can't be a single civilized eighties survivor that did not, at one time, play Pole Position or Q-Bert at eleven at night, sitting in the warming glow of Dig-Dug's bright colors in his footy pajamas. I tried in vain to beat all one hundred levels of Combat, a game that bored me to tears that I played anyway, just to see what would happen next. Eighties children scorn today's technology. Who needs Mortal Kombat when you have Joust? "I don't need to express to you the fact that Atari was the best video game system ever created, and still is today," stresses Shorr, who still owns and operates the system. Eat your hearts out, Mario Brothers.

 Even when the TV was off and the Atari disconnected, we still managed to keep ourselves busy. I collected Garbage Pail Kids, most of which revolved around snot, because snot was funny in the eighties. I had my mother fire up the oven to make Shrinky Dinks, and occasionally to speed the drying process of my latest Play-Doh sculpture. To enrich our minds we would play with our Speak and Spell until the batteries died and the electronic voice became too scary to bear. I turned on the magic of shining lights with my Light Brite. I raced our Matchbox cars over the kitchen linoleum, crashing them into things and imagining horrible deaths for the drivers inside. When I was hungry I would crank up the Snoopy Sno-Cone machine and eat some colored ice, pretending I could actually taste the flavor of the runny syrup I dumped generously over it. We were never bored.

 The eighties ruled the board game scene. I could play Mousetrap or Sorry! until the cows came home, and I had fun getting in to Trouble (and truly loved the Popamatic bubble.) I always chose Maria when we played Guess Who?, because no one ever guessed her. I cheated at Chutes and Ladders, because no self-respecting child could lose such a baby game, and I fantasized about running rampant in a Candy Land, eating everything in sight. And everyone knew that the green hippo's neck was just a hair longer than the other Hungry Hungry Hippos, assuring victory. I didn't Break the Ice, though I occasionally got caught in the Crossfire. I never lost a game to my parents.

 If board games were king to an eighties youth, then action figures were God. Every segment of the population had his or her own: GI Joe and He-Man for the militant boys, Transformers and Go-Bots for the future mechanics, She-Ra for the girls who secretly lusted for power (and for boys who needed someone to service their He-Men) and the docile girls had Care Bears action figures, and Rose Petal Place, and even a few Strawberry Shortcake dolls (though, and no one will ever readily admit this, we had the most fun of all with our Happy Meal toys.) Whole universes were created and destroyed at the hands of the Thundercats. Worlds collided when action figures mingled-- He-Man would beat the crap out of GI Joe, and Care Bears would ride around atop My Little Ponies, spreading joy throughout Big Apple City. The possibilities for an Eighties child were endless.

 And of course, no one can forget about Barbie. Almost every little girl had at least one, and more than a few little boys did, too. And we only used them for two things-- dressing and undressing, and, of course, getting it on. Everybody's Barbies got it on. Mine did. Yours did. It's a simple fact of life. And most Eighties children are not afraid to discuss exactly how their Kens and Barbies scored. Susan Peterson, a sophomore in high school, recalls her Barbie's first time: "It was in the shower. Barbie and Ken were taking a shower, Barbie dropped the soap, Ken bent down to pick it up, and his hand got caught on her boob. Then they just decided to screw." Cristin Erwin, now preparing for her freshman year in college, recalls that "it was non-stop. It was crazy and sinful. They did it all the time; before the first date, after the first date, during the first date. I even had lesbian Barbie sex. My Barbies were extremely satisfied." Richard Shara, a college freshman, sums it up by saying, "you mean they weren't made for doing it?"

 I had dolls, too-- Cabbage Patch Kids, and Rainbow Brite, Care Bears and their friends and cousins and other distant relatives. Teddy Ruxpin would tell me a story, if his batteries were powered up, and the Gloworms made me feel safe in the dark. Pillow People and Pound Puppies protected me from the monster-- or communist-- in my closet, and my Gummi Bears lifted our spirits when times were low. And of course there were My Buddy and Kid Sister, but not one child of the Eighties ever actually owned one. We did, however, retain their jingle:

 We are scions of useless knowledge, kings and queens of Trivial Pursuit. We know every television theme song, from The Facts of Life to Dumbo's Circus ("they're coming to visit-- you won't want to miss it!-- they're coming to visit you!") We know that we can get a laugh with "What you talkin' 'bout, Willis?" and that we didn't turn out exactly as our parents had hoped.  We're bonded in a way that no other generation can be-- with plastic figurines and gamma rays. We know our soul mate will have a complete set of He-Men to go with our She-Ras, and that our best friend will always want to be Patty O'Green in a game of Rainbow Brite. We're children of the Eighties, born in the USA, and we're not going to take it. We're so excited, and we just can't hide it. We have to fight for our right to party. And through it all, we know that tomorrow, tomorrow, we'll start the day tomorrow with a song or two.