I Am Not That Demographic! (denial strikes again)

For my entire life, commerce has pandered to my mother's generation. She is a baby-boomer, and that's a huge demographic, lots of potential buyers. Freedom Rock compilation tapes for aging hippies, kitchen gadgets for the new working moms, and tons of junk being sold by celebrities from back in her day. Suzanne Somers exercise machines, Sally Struthers home diplomas, Lindsay Wagner sleep number beds, all ads aimed at my mother's generation. But now I sense a new trend. The market is pandering to me. More specifically, it's pandering to my childhood.

Bridge To Terabithia, the movie. Transformers, the movie. Psych, a television show about men my age who can't seem to move past the eighties, which ends every episode with an a cappella version of some twenty three year old pop song. Maybe it's just that the retro movement has hit an age I remember from the first time around, or maybe it's that people like me (what a frightening concept) are a big enough target group that they have to notice. I know that the 'skinny' jeans and leg-warmers are just retro fashion. I get that the neo-mullets and giant hoop earrings are a nod at the past and not the return of it. But a Transformers movie twenty years after people stopped buying the toys? What's next, a live action Jem? Thundercats? NOOOOO!

I am not old enough to be pandered to, not on my own dime. Look, manufacturers and ad execs pander to kids with sugary food and over-priced toys, because they know parents will sometimes give in and buy the crap if the kid yells loud enough. And they pander to the middle-aged, because they know that at that age it becomes very important to try to buy back youth. But I'm 31. I am too old to be asking my parents to buy me stuff and I am not yet old enough to be buying back my childhood, or reliving it through senility. I am still young, dammit! I live in the now, not in the past. Old people live in the past and say things like "back in my day," I don't.

Look, I have fond memories of the eighties too. But I also have a distinct connection to reality and the call on that line says not to bring back the big-hair decade. We don't need rockers in spandex, although the return of long hair is of course a welcome respite from insanity. We don't need colored jeans. We really really don't need the musical instruments of the eighties. Keytars, synthesizers, saxophone solos? Am I the only one who remembers how much the eighties sucked? Am I the only one here who remembers MC Serch?