When something finds you, it’s like an unexpected trip. The Eighties found me and I went.

Duran Duran was the gateway drug. I bought their poster-boy smiles and Vogue looks hook and hat, as in Duranie tan fedora with cream sash. My older sister and I knew every word of The Reflex. We ditched our Vans for pale oxfords off the rack.

The year was 1985, I was thirteen years old.

It didn’t take us long to move past Simon and John to a darker edge, Siouxsie and the Banshees black leggings and Chinese slip-ons, blacker eye-liner, oversized shirts, double pierced ears. Everyone else still worshiped Levi and Izod, plastic bead necklaces and Nike. We were a Flock of Seagulls beyond that, asymmetrical hair cuts to prove it.

My social studies teacher pulled me aside one day and asked where I shopped. This was a common occurrence. My answer was always the same: my mom sewed half of my wardrobe – loose, collarless shirts and long Bananrama-worthy flowing vests. The other half I thrifted from the bowels of every Salvation Army between Las Vegas and L.A. – men’s baggy pants, paisley vests.

I was first chair clarinetist in seventh grade band. Class was anything but boring. Mr. Pergola was our band teacher by day, Las Vegas Strip drummer by night. He wore leisure suits and gold necklaces, and always chewed gum. He exuded cool, he was nothing like my dad.

After school and on weekends, Tower Records was my go-to. It was the anti-mall, the uber-cool, run by Dave Gahan look alikes wearing black on black. Across the street from the university, leather jacket guys came in droves, crushing cigarette butts under their heels at the door. I went there for albums and looks, and later, cassette tapes. But not CDs. Like rap music, they were another plateau – I just couldn’t make the jump.

Tears for Fears had everything to do with it. The Hurting. I caught their Songs from the Big Chair tour, front row center. I wall papered my bedroom: Curt with moody braids, Roland with a brooding fro. They advocated Arthur Janov’s Primal Scream. I found it at the library in the adult non-fiction section. Following Janov’s advice, I re-birthed myself on my floral quilted bed (sans psychologist, of course). I considered taking up Earl Gray tea, Roland’s favorite, but then remembered my family didn’t drink tea. I studied meditation from a Reader’s Guide article and plotted ways to travel to Bath, England.

One spring day, Mr. Pergola told me to wait after class. “I need a first chair tenor sax in Jazz Band next year.”

I wondered what it had to do with me. “But I play the clarinet! I don’t know the first thing about saxophones!”

He smiled. “The tenor sax has the same fingering as the clarinet. Just bigger and louder. Here, I have one you can borrow.” He pointed to a large black case in the corner of his office. “Learn it over the summer and you can start eighth grade as first chair tenor. I know you can do it.”

I wasn’t so sure.

These were the months I lived in my room. My family saw me only when I left for school, ate, attended church, or had a band concert. My younger brother now tells me I didn’t talk to him for an entire year. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my family, I was just more interested in scouring the pages of Teen Beat for new bands or composing typewriter poetry alone on my bedroom floor.

I spent the summer broadening my musical horizons, learning the tenor sax while playing along to the Beastie Boys and Wham!.

When fall came, Mr. Pergola began eighth grade Jazz Band class with a lesson on improvisation. He taught us to play more with our bodies than our minds. He modeled it by drumming some pretty sweet riffs. “Once your head learns the music,” he told us, “let go, let the notes sing out of your fingertips, play the moment.”

Outside of band, I didn’t listen to jazz. I fangirled groups on my PeeChee folders like Blancmange, PIL, Gene Loves Jezebel, Haircut 100, New Order, Kraftwerk, The Smiths. No one at my lunch table knew who they were. I felt islanded; I persisted. I drew peace signs on my arms with charcoal eyeliner. My parents told me the peace sign was a broken cross and of the devil. I disagreed. What was wrong with peace?

I began seeing past my childhood. I knew there was no going back. I packed away by stuffed Ziggy and Smurfs. I stood on the cusp of beyond. I spoke a new language but didn’t remember learning it.

And yet I still wasn’t sure about improvising. I tried it at home, played with my eyes shut, my audience the walls. Was I a poser? Could I pull it off?

Molly Ringwald could. I adored her. No matter that her last name read like an intestinal disease. She was the center of mid-Eighties chic: the poise, the smile, the lush layers of lace and white and tan.

My older sister and I snuck into The Breakfast Club. It was rated R, we weren’t eighteen yet. I waffled between Claire (the snob) and Allison (the basket case). I’d never been in detention before, couldn’t fathom dancing in the library. I wanted the heart of a boy, a stolen kiss. “Don’t you forget about me” hung from our lips.

Post haste we joined the John Hughes fan club. We wore our I {heart} Ferris t-shirts proudly to the opening night show. No one else had them. Ferris was a convertible car driving, Danke Schoen kind of guy; we would’ve ditched school to sing in a parade with him, too.

(John Hughes died in 2009. We all wanted to go to his funeral. Instead my siblings and I sat around our parent’s kitchen table and reminisced about Duckie and prom, ours IRL were nothing close as cool.)

Towards the end of my eighth grade year, Mr. Pergola announced that we’d earned a spot in the 1986 Pomona College Jazz Festival. We were traveling to southern California. And some of us had solos. I looked at the sheet music, mine was partly-scripted. The rest?

Empty bars of blank.

I fretted about the blank. Mr. Pergola smiled and said, “You’ll know what to do.”

It’s now 2016. The radio plays Twenty-One Pilots, Lord Huron, Martin Garrix. My response? Scritti Politti that. I know, I know. It’s a Mad, Mad World.

Because High School Musical is no Footloose. Miley is no Molly. Imagine Dragons are no Cure.

Shoulder pads, MTV, and Reaganomics immortalized the Eighties, but what about epic bands like REM, Depeche Mode, and U2? These were their foundational years. Don’t underestimate them. Much of their best, angsty stuff was in the Eighties, in their youth.

Do we ever realize how fundamental our beginnings are? How we wake up to the world and how the world wakes up to us? Something clicks and we become.

My heart may be stuck in Some Kind of Wonderful, but the more gray hair I get, the less I care. Am I to blame that my children know all the lyrics to Alphaville’s Jet Set? Maybe. It’s either to the moon or middle school Monday through Friday, in our silver, seven-seater minivan.

These days my kids visit YouTube and Pandora. They’re discovering their own sound, not my clearance rack New Wave. They follow strange bands with stranger names and bond over bass drops and lyrics. They’re discovering the world as it beats around them. Trying out new identities. Improvising. And finding what I found in the Eighties: myself.

Oh, and the Pomona College Jazz Festival of ‘86? When my solo came, I knew exactly what to do. I closed my eyes and let the music fly.

What decade defines you? And what did you learn from your adolescence?