Page 48 of Eva Reddy’s Trip of a Lifetime

GUESS JEANS were a must-have fashion item for every schoolgirl in the eighties.

My best friend Rachael had two pairs. If you had a red inverted triangle stitched on your butt it meant you were cool, rich and very, very skinny.

These jeans were so tight, some styles came with zips on the legs to help the wearer shimmy them on.

DOLLY was an Australian magazine marketed at girls between the ages of thirteen and seventeen.

I was the first of my peers who was allowed to buy it.

I’d dash to the newsagent on publication day to pick up my copy.

And for a few days afterwards, I was the most popular girl in school.

My favourite sections were ‘Dolly Doctor’ and the advice column.

It was exciting to read a magazine that recognised that teenage girls had sex.

Or at least were being pressured for sex.

MICHAEL SCHOEFFLING, MOLLY RINGWALD, EMILIO ESTEVEZ and ALLY SHEEDY were fixtures on the eighties teen rom-com circuit.

My favourite movie back then was Sixteen Candles (Schoeffling/Ringwald) because it felt like it was written about Jonathan and me.

Maybe the producers should make a (really depressing) sequel.

Now that music is digital, we can play any tune, in any order, at any time we like.

Before that, there was the MIXTAPE. Making a mixtape was an exercise in patience and dexterity.

First you inserted a blank cassette into your tape deck.

Then you waited for a song you liked to come onto the radio.

When you heard those first few notes, you pressed down on the play and record buttons simultaneously.

The timing was never quite right, so at the start and end of every song on a mixtape, there were stray bits of advertisements and DJ banter.

Nowadays people queue for coffee; in the eighties we’d line up to buy the new release SWATCH watch. I was the proud owner of a transparent jellyfish Swatch.

The arrival of HALLEY’S COMET was a huge event in Australia, and we were supposed to have a front-row seat. Except you could hardly see the thing. My mother said it was her biggest disappointment since the dismissal of Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. And she really loved Gough.

‘LIFE. BE IN IT’ was a hugely successful Australian health campaign of the late seventies and early eighties.

It featured a beer-bellied cartoon character called Norm who learns to love getting out and about and exercising.

As a child, I thought Norm was a slob. Nowadays, I understand the appeal of sitting on the couch and doing nothing.

THE STEPFORD WIVES is a book and movie about men turning intelligent women into homemaking robots. Jonathan achieved the same feat without any scientific background. A lot of men do.

My first memory as a child is going to the ABBA Arrival concert with my mother. I treated the experience as a dirty secret as a teenager. Now I brag about it. I even found a way to mention it in this glossary.

FATAL ATTRACTION is a movie about a husband who has a one-night stand and his life spirals as a result. It brought us the expression ‘bunny boiler’ to describe a woman who is obsessive and unhinged. There isn’t really an equivalent expression for men. Killer is probably closest.

MURPHY brOWN was my favourite show in the early nineties, mostly because it was set in a television newsroom.

Candice Bergen played the role of Murphy Brown, the tough-as-nails, wise-cracking investigative journalist and anchor.

I wanted to be just like her, except without the alcohol problem and with a partner.

The show ran for ten seasons—significantly longer than my reporting career.

SEX was a very popular and hugely controversial television series that reported on anything and everything to do with sex. My mother loved it. It was presented by Sophie Lee. She became a national sex symbol when she hosted The Bugs Bunny Show . I have no idea how that works.

Yes, children, there was music before Spotify.

It was called THE WALKMAN and was quite the innovation in its day.

Cliff Richard even wrote a song about it.

Suddenly we could pump music directly into our ears while we were on the move.

All we had to do was tuck a passport-sized cassette player into our pockets or clip it onto our belts and then connect it to the cord of our earphones.

Obviously if you were wearing Guess jeans at the time, the belt clip was the only practical option.

BANANARAMA was an English all-girl pop group who bear full responsibility for my hair, fashion sense and dance moves in the mid-eighties.

WAYFARERS were everywhere in 1986. Everybody I wanted to be, or date, was wearing them. Tom Cruise! The Breakfast Club gang! Blondie! Madonna! The cops from Miami Vice !

In 1986, there were three acceptable venues for first dates: THE BOWLING ALLEY, the movies and the ice-skating rink.

THE NOTEBOOK is every girl’s go-to movie when she needs a jolly good cry. And who wouldn’t want to spend two hours and one minute in the company of Ryan Gosling? It’s also a story about love, dementia and getting old. So, I sob doubly hard nowadays.

DEMI MOORE and PATRICK SWAYZE starred in Ghost . Damn, they looked good together. And I didn’t think Swayze could get any hotter than when he was swivelling his hips in Dirty Dancing .

THELMA AND LOUISE is one of the best movies ever made (said no man ever). What’s not to love about two women losing their shit on a road trip and then doing their bit to take down the patriarchy? Plus, a very young Brad Pitt takes his shirt off. Epic.

The ENERGIZER BUNNY campaign began in 1988 and like that incredibly annoying drum-playing pink rabbit, the campaign just keeps going and going and going. Mum says she’s going to keep calling me Bunny until the rabbit retires.

Back before anyone thought to be offended, the lead singer of CULTURE CLUB, Boy George, got around in loose, flowing clothes, long beribboned hair and make-up. The music was pure joy. I guess nowadays Culture Club would be a victim of cancel culture.

FROGGER is a 1981 arcade game. The aim is to get your frog across a busy road and then across a river without drowning or getting squished. It’s a tough game when you’re playing it in a milk bar. It’s even tougher in real life.

CYNDI LAUPER’s hair could be orange, pink, embellished, asymmetrically shaved and myriad other things. My mother never attempted all those looks at the one time. But her style was always at odds with our conservative suburban neighbourhood.

JENNY KEE is an Australian designer who created crazily bright knitwear featuring Australian plants and animals. Princess Di wore one of her jumpers to the polo. But what is perfect in jumper form at a polo match is not appropriate as a school pickup outfit.

The NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT PARTY was founded in June 1984 and drew people from the left wing of the Labor Party.

My mother was all in, until rumours started circulating that it had been taken over by Trotskyists.

Mum quickly went back to supporting Hawkey.

She likes that he holds the world record for drinking a yard of ale.

She always considered that a much more useful qualification for an Australian Prime Minister than John Howard’s high school citizenship award.

Before home computers, CONCERT TICKETS could only be purchased at special ticket agencies.

If the act was big, the queues would go on for blocks.

To be sure of securing a seat, some people would camp out overnight.

My mother’s early morning dash into town meant we were first in line and got front row seats.

JANA WENDT was only twenty-four when she joined Australian 60 Minutes . It was a controversial appointment. Critics claimed she was too young. But I reckon they just didn’t like that she was a woman. She absolutely rocked it.

My mother took me to see TERMS OF ENDEARMENT when I was twelve.

It was rated M for ages fifteen and up. So, it wasn’t suitable.

But I think Mum wanted to bond over the mother–child relationship.

Even if the child did end up dying. Shirley MacLaine reminded me of my mother. A lot. That’s not a compliment.

Here’s a fun fact. According to one database, there are 51,161 male SUPERHEROES and villains and only 6,120 female. That’s an even poorer showing than in the corporate world where women account for only 22.3% of CEOs.

ROMANCING THE STONE is a 1984 romantic comedy starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. The plot has the pair hunting for treasure and dodging bad guys through the Colombian jungle. Somehow, they find time for sex. In my experience, this is realistic.

NURSE RATCHED is the cruel overseer of a psychiatric ward in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest . She gives one patient a lobotomy and drives another to suicide. Yes, I was really that horrible to my mother.

A BLUE LAGOON is a garish blue cocktail made of vodka, curacao and lemonade. It used to be a favourite among teenage girls trying to develop a taste for alcohol.

The EAT RIGHT 4 YOUR TYPE diet was the fad diet of 1996. If I’d just been a little bit more ordinary and was blood group O, I’d have been able to eat protein. It didn’t work. But then again, I couldn’t stick to it.

The character of Donna Martin on Beverly Hills 90210 used the euphemism ‘WILD THING’ for sex. It took seven seasons before she lost her virginity, perhaps because no one knew what she was talking about.

‘I AM WOMAN’ is possibly the greatest song ever written. I like to pretend I am distantly related to Helen Reddy.

Rachael loved the Ms PAC-MAN video game because it starred a woman. That game came out in 1982. We had to wait another twenty years for Lara Croft.

PERKINS PASTE is an Australian glue that was used in schools all over the country back when I was a kid. It was non-toxic but it was still fantastic to sniff.

I don’t think it is coincidence that MARVEL’s first female superhero, Susan Storm, had invisibility powers. Of course, middle-aged women don’t need to be exposed to cosmic rays to travel through the world unseen.

The HONEY BADGER is a former professional football player and the star of the sixth season of the Australian Bachelor . He famously rejected both women in the series finale. He remains in a long-term relationship with a brand of underwear.