To a bright-eyed ten year old in 1987 this is what the grown-up wonderland of “offices” and “business” looked like – people in suits towering over us as we looked on bright-eyed, that charismatic dude from that “Family Ties” show functioning as our doppelgänger.
I pretty much assumed this is how things would be when I got older and had to work for a living. That it was all fun and games, that all you really needed to do work, whatever that was, were “poster boards, colored pencils, colored push pins, a T square, a drawing table, and lots of pencils”, and that you could have your secretary order your lunch. Then, you kicked back and looked cool, maybe you got to fall in love with a co-worker. My youth all was as simply wonderful as “Walking on Sunshine” and the adult world would be too.
It isn’t, of course, and you learn this pretty quickly. None of us are Carlton Whitfield or Brantley Foster; we’re all just Peter Gibbons. “The Secret of my Success distills 1987 down to its awful essence,” wrote Nathan Rabin for the tragically shuttered Dissolve and that essence is essentially “Walking on Sunshine.” I get what he’s saying, and he’s not wrong, but 1987 through a ten year old’s eyes is a different things and I’d give anything to see it through those eyes just one more time.
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