There’s a popular meme which states “When I was a kid, I thought quicksand was going to be a much bigger problem than it really is.”

I grew up in the 80s. I had a Members Only jacket, one pair of parachute pants, an assortment of skinny ties, and some rocking velcro black Reeboks. I lived and breathed cheesy sci-fi, drank coke from my McDonald’s Star Wars glass collection, and went to bed under a sky-blue Empire Strikes Back blanket. I can still see Luke with his blaster drawn, Bespin behind him. I remember watching countless flicks where the hero sank into quicksand and I always made a mental note to heed his advice. Don’t struggle, it only makes you sink faster.

Thinking back, there’s a whole host of things which always happened in my favorite 80s shows that never materialized into problems in my future adult life:

1. Getting sucked into a comic book and needing to fight my way back out
2. Jealous computers
3. Needing to dive at just the right time to outrun an explosion
4. Knowing how to pick a lock with a bobby pin borrowed from a woman’s hair
5. Outsmarting a killer computer in a dazzling display of logic
6. Switchblades
7. Anyone from the future
8. Fights on ledges over lava
9. Getting frozen by liquid nitrogen (or carbonite)
10. Escaping by crawling through HVAC ducts
11. Falling through the ceiling while crawling through HVAC ducts
12. Meteor strikes
13. Knowing how to close a demonic portal
14. Ninjas
15. Using proper form when swinging across chasms (kiss the girl, first!)
16. Identifying cursed talismans
17. Dealing with bounty hunters
18. Crashing my car through a fruit cart
19. Being recruited to fight in an alien war
20. Getting trapped in the past

Well, okay, I suppose #20 did actually happen.