How a Game Show and A-ha taught me love

A spotify playlist led me back to the eighties today. 

At the same time a story came to my mind which I want to share with you. I am sure that you know similiar anecdotes from that time.

Mid 80s the world was still alright. Entire Germany sat down on the tiles table to watch the show of the superlative: „Wanna bet...!?“ (Wetten dass...!?) 

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Internet? Didn’t exit!

YouTube? What do you dream of?

Video-on-demand? Rocketry!

There was no way not to watch TV on a saturday at home at 08.15pm. Thomas Gottschalk did his job very well and even his style in clothing brought up lots of topics for conversation at night.

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In my memory there was really everyone participating when „crazy“ bets would make for funny nights: my parents, my brothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, quasi all of germany - eating pretzel sticks - was waiting for the mixture of „Saalwette“ (which is a bet from the moderator against the audience), „Wettkönig“ (so-called: kingbets) and international artists.

Entire germany - except me.

At that time I was bound to compulsory schooling so I was somewhere else: in my bed. 

So I was dependent on the reliability of a machine that by now seems to be from the Stone Age – the videorecorder.

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This unimpressive, chunky, black box was a little window for me, through which I could look into the future and fascinating world from the adults.

The reliability of this time machine was not always a given though. A chewed-up tape and mysterious picture and sound fragments were difficult to handle and therefore the replay turned into a medial nightmare.

The advanced video programming system should be established little by little. That’s why I was dependent on the reliability of my parents, to push the recording button on time.

The next morning – of course I was the first one awake – I could be surprised by the friendliness of my parents („Wow – this time they remembered to record at 08:30pm!“) 

I liked especially one of these mornings.

This beginning of the day should not shock my emotional life less.

The norwegian band „A-ha“ was in the studio and had (next to the obligatory live perfomance) the opportunity to present their new music video. It was the well-known song „Take on me“.

The compostition of trendy sounds and a touching story (today I would say: what schmaltzy stuff!) touched me so much back then, that I was able to understand one of the feelings of adults for the first time: love!

It was only a little extract, maybe 30 seconds. But long enough to really touch me.

You could see how the drawn protagonist (it was the singer of the band) was beaten up by two bad guys and later tries desperately to get to the world of his beloved. 

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I rewinded back and back again, I have never seen something like that. The queer position of feelings, the trendy catchy sounds and the fabulous world of comics in the videoclip didn’t let go of me.

I had to watch the video or better say the extract like a hundred times, because after a few days the videotape was so claimed, that the quality decreased and lots of errors happened in the picture and in the sound. My dream faded...

When the song comes on today through some kind of virtual playlist via hightech-bluetooth-loud speaker, I often think back - how it used to be. In the analogous eighties, when the feelings arised.  

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