Here's what MSN says is

Here's what MSN says is the music of my senior year in high school.

On the whole, I'd say the list was accurate. Paula Abdul was the girl that year, and I still have the Simply Red A New Flame
tape in the basement. Even though it's not on the list, I have fond
memories of headbanging in the old Le Baron to Guns N'Roses Sweet Child of Mine. So, on the whole, the list is accurate. However, I take issue with If I Could Turn Back Time by Cher: that was strictly spring of junior year, which was 1988. And the only
reason I remember this is because of that damn video. And you know
which one it is.
Around sixth grade or so, my parents had forbidden MTV. I wasn't
supposed to watch any videos because, according to my mother, "it was
all sexsexsex!" Understandably, this was a major bummer. I'd been
watching MTV since we'd acquired cable: which was a few months after
its inauguration. So, being the clever girl that I was, I switched over
to VH1, going strictly by the "No MTV" rule. It wasn't MTV: it was VH1.
And they were worlds apart. Or so I reasoned until my parents banned
that one, too. But these being the days before cable locks and v-chips,
I simply got sneaky about my viewing habits. I learned how to sense my
mother's force field very quickly. I noted all the creaks in the
floorboards between the kitchen and the family room and when she hit
one, I changed the channel as quickly as I could. Which was very
quickly, in the scheme of things and which required an interesting set
of manuevers, since the parentals wouldn't chip out five extra bucks a
month for a remote for the cable box. At any point in my wasted youth,
you could have found me sprawled out on the floor directly in front of
the television set. Since we had no remote, the sofa was deemed too far
away from the box to provide ample viewing options. So, the floor it
was. I'd lay there, right smack in front of the TV (which, no doubt, is
why I'm considered legally blind in some states), on my back, a pillow
under my head, legs bent at the knees. In some ways, this was
completely natural thing. I know most people sit on sofas and think
sitting on the floor is crude. Well, we didn't have that option. The
size of our family dictated that more than a few of us wound up on the
floor: there simply wasn't room for all of us to sit on the sofa,
particularly if Mom was watching the boober with us. We were expected
to automatically defer to her if she came into the family room. Whilst
booted from the cushy sofa, Mom nevertheless provided us with pillows
and we, being the limber young things we were, really didn't mind all
that much. In other ways, however, this was not natural. By the time
MTV had been banned, there were only four of us kids in the house,
meaning that with the easy chair at the back of the family room there
was ample space for us all to be off the horrifically ugly brown shag
carpeting that was the family room floor. But the floor was still
comfortable and we still laid on it, even though there was ample sofa
space. Furthermore, if I wanted to watch MTV, it was crucial that I
stayed away from the sofa.
So, I suppose you can picture it. A young, skinny girl, flat on her
back in her family room, watching MTV's broadcast from a TV that was
conveniently placed on a shelf about two feet off the floor, keeping an
ear open for her mother so she doesn't get yelled at. Well, yeah,
that's about right. But here's where the interesting maneuvers come in,
because I didn't bother to lift myself off the floor to change the
channels.
Huh? You say, wondering how such a thing is possible.
Well, the thing to keep in mind is that my knees were bent.
Another thing that would probably go a long way toward explaining all
of this is that I have narrow feet, with long skinny toes. So, with my
right leg casually balanced on the left knee, I could change the
channel on the cable box without ever lifting up by using the second
toe on my right foot. I could even do it with socks on, too. Am I
talented or what? Getting back to the whole Cher debacle in high
school, it should probably be mentioned that I never fooled my folks.
They knew
I was watching videos; they just only rarely caught me at it. They
would lecture me about it, I would throw out a line or two about how
the videos weren't really that bad, they'd lecture me some
more, and because I was the last of eight kids, that pretty much was
the end of that. As my older siblings never fail to remind me, I had it
easy in comparison with them, and yes, I can finally admit that that is
true. However, when I started dating, and inviting boys to come and sit
on the sofa in the family room, I was more than a little embarrassed
that I couldn't openly do what everyone else was doing: watching MTV.
So, being a brazen little tart, I would flick on MTV when boys were
over and we'd watch, all the while I'd be praying silently that my
parents wouldn't come in and bust me and embarrass me in front of
whatever guy I was trying to impress the hell out of that particular
night.
So, one night, in the spring of 1988, I was watching TV with a boy
who'd just taken me out to dinner and obviously had plans to get to at least second base that night. We'd just finished watching Hollywood Shuffle and had flipped on VH1 while the tape was rewinding before we started The Princess Bride. If I Could Turn Back Time comes on, and while this is really not a video you want to be watching with a, shall we say, excited,
eighteen-year-old boy to begin with (particularly not when you're a
seventeen-year-old virgin with plans on keeping it that way), the
situation becomes even more undesirable when, ahem, your uberconservative father walks into the room...
...just as Cher straddles one of the big guns on that battleship.
You know, it's pretty bad when you can feel a blush coming on. When you
can feel the heat flood into your face, it's absolutely awful. You're
embarrassed, the world knows it and there's no way to hide it. But it's
even worse when you're embarrassed, for all the right reasons I might
add, and everyone's oblivous to the fact.
My father says "hi" to the guy, he says "hi" back to my dad and they
start in on an earnest conversation about the merits of Cher's work. My
jaw dropped when my father, for whom the height of musical joy is the Beer Barrel Polka,
tries to prove that he does, indeed, know something about pop culture
and starts chatting about how Cher was married to Greg Allmann at one
point in time. HUH?
I couldn't change the channel. I was halfway across the room, sitting
on the sofa, and the toe thing just wasn't an option. I tried to change
the conversation, but the two of them were so into it, there was no
going back. And I knew when the coversation was over and done with, I was going to get busted big time
for watching videos. Something I was not supposed to be doing, yet had
neglected to mention to my date that evening because I was deathly
afraid of being thought uncool. The teenage angst was so thick you
would have needed a chainsaw to cut through it. However, nothing
happened. My Dad left the room after the video was over. My date said
my Dad was a really cool guy. And I, after a long "what the hell?"
moment, completely baffled and bemused, slammed The Princess Bride tape into the VCR and thanked God it was all over with.

So, I know this particular song came out in 1988. It just did. There's no forgetting it at this point in time. Even though Amazon disagrees with me. Well, maybe I'm wrong and my memory is playing tricks on me. It might have been
that other video she did with her much-younger boyfriend where
she's---YET AGAIN---scantily clad, but damnit, I think you get the
gist! Which would be, it's all Cher's fault!
Well, not really, but I had to wind this post up
somehow and the whole fact checking thing threw me. Grrrrr.
Longwindedness for nuthin'!

{H/T: el butchers o' llamas)