Things that remind me of my sister: the '80s

Last week I posted some pictures of things that reminded me of my childhood, and I mentioned that I'd be posting some more this week. This week it's less about me specifically and more about things that remind me of my sister ... we're only three years apart in age, so we enjoyed most of the same things -- and most of the time we were able to enjoy each other's company without fighting (too much).

So, without further ado, I hope you and she enjoy this list!

Adventures in Babysitting entered our lives in 1987, and we were never the same. Elisabeth Shue became our heroine of choice. A plastic Thor helmet, a tow truck driven by a man with a hook for a hand, and a Blues club. This movie had it all. Eat your heart out, Avatar.

Babysitting probably took the place of an earlier-'80s favorite of ours: The Pirate Movie. It came out in 1982 and starred Christopher Atkins and Kristy McNichol, and I guarantee you we saw it at least 20 times. I think we only saw it on TV, but it was one of those that ran and ran and ran. We had huge crushes on Chris Atkins. I couldn't tell you the plot of the movie today, but I could quote the script chapter and verse way back when.

Another one that we watched millions of times, it seemed, was The Goonies. Didn't we ALL love The Goonies?

In TV Land, we had some favorites, as well. We LOVED Arnold and Willis.

And I'm not sure if we LOVED Fraggle Rock or if it just came on in a timeslot in which there was no other competition, but I remember watching this show religiously ... I just don't remember us ENJOYING it all that much.

But a show that we DID love was The Smurfs. Gargamel, Azrael, Papa Smurf, Smurfette ... we not only watched the show, but we had the little sticker books with the magnetic, removable stickers that you could place throughout the book to re-enact scenes from the show, and we had plenty of Smurf stuffed animals. Big Fans.

Anyone remember Our House? That was way back when Shannon Doherty was a nice young woman with her whole life ahead of her. And there was this cutie named Chad Allen whom we both had a crush on. Much more realistic than Chris Atkins, since Chad was closer to our age and all.

We had Wonder Woman Underoos, and we played Wonder Woman with no shame. We were obsessed with the show, and when I see Lynda Carter randomly from time to time on TV, I still get nostalgic for the old days.

When we weren't busy watching movies or TV shows, we played lots of games. We loved Simon, and we were pretty good at it. SKILL LEVEL 4, BRING IT ON.

We also played outdoors a lot. I tried for about 10 minutes to find a picture of the exact pink Huffy bike that reminded me so much of my sister's, but I couldn't find the exact same one. It had a really puffy seat, sort of rectangular. No luck on Google Images. But I thought I'd post a picture of a skateboard instead, because -- tomboys that we were -- we liked to skateboard. We ruined many a pair of tennis shoes skateboarding down our steep driveway in Raleigh.

Our first computer was a Commodore 64. I was jealous (for some reason) of my friends' TIs (Texas Instruments), but the C64 was a good machine. WOW, it looks ANCIENT now.

We were big fans of Pole Position.

And Donkey Kong.

And Frogger.

And then, when we had completely exhausted everything our beloved Commodore 64 could do for us, our parents got us a Nintendo.

I remember playing two games very vividly. The first was one of the first iterations of Mario. DANG, we ruled at that game. Hidden coins, YOU ARE NO MATCH FOR US.

The second was The Legend of Zelda. I STUNK at this game, but I watched my sister play for hours. She was exceptional at it.

Although we weren't really "girly girls," we did have a dollhouse and we played with Barbies and Kens. I look at this picture and I can literally FEEL the purple satin between my fingers. And also, those wheels really rolled. Funny, the things you remember.

I'll probably never hear an Amy Grant song -- of any decade, off any album -- without thinking of my sister. We can identify any song off of any of her albums by the first three notes, guaranteed. Lead Me On was one of our favorite albums of all time. (I still have most of the songs off of it on my iPod today.)

And The Collection is chock-full of hits from many of her earlier albums. Another favorite, and one I can remember singing harmony on with my sister for hours.

SPEAKING OF HARMONY. I think I included this song in a previous post sometime last year maybe, but we belted this song out I DARE SAY better than Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin in our day. It's on my iPod, too.

My sister and I started taking violin lessons when she was 3 and I was 6. We had to take some sort of music lesson until we graduated from high school ... she stuck with violin the longest, while I went on to piano and then voice. But this picture took me RIGHT BACK to my (and her) violin days. Looking at it, I can feel the weight of the bow in my hand, and the chill of the metal part if my index finger hit it.

faux, but I have no idea. I CAN tell you that mine smelled like a wet cat -- even when it was dry. We were so proud of those jackets ... today, blech.

And finally, UNITS clothing. As "precious" as it was, I couldn't find many pictures of representative pieces on the Internet. SHOCKING. We each had several pieces of the "Buy 10 pieces and you can make outfits for 30 days" collection. The iconic piece for me was the belt, which is pictured below. I had a pink one and a teal one. Again, SHOCKING.

To my sister, whose birthday is coming up, I love you and I'm so glad we got to spend our childhoods together!