21 Reasons to Be Glad It's Not the '80s

It's almost Thanksgiving, so let's take a moment to appreciate the little things—specifically, the many frustrations of the 1980s that no longer require your attention. Benjamin Solomon provides a handy reminder of 21 of them, via Vanity Fair. The highlights:

1. You no longer have to stick a pencil in the wheel of your cassette to roll the tape back in when your stereo's gone haywire.
2. You don't have to rewind anything before taking it back to Blockbuster. In fact, you don't have to go to Blockbuster. Ever.
3. No need to fumble desperately with your TV's rabbit ears while trying to catch an important show.
4. You don't have to scribble down an address then pull out a map to find a place.

5. When it starts to rain, it's not necessary to grab your car window's handle and crank as quickly as possible.
6. Forgotten which channel is MTV? You don't need to rapid-fire through the cable box, checking each one for signs of Michael Jackson.
7. Never again will you need to worry about overfilling a tiny floppy disk.
8. You don't need enough pockets for a Walkman, address book, camera, newspaper, map, and checkbook.
9. When calling someone who's not home, you won't hear a message informing you that the person's answering-machine tape is full.
10. And you never need to spend another night waiting by the phone, praying that special someone will call.

Click for the full list. (More 1980s stories.)