Day 39: Bang your head! Air guitar solo!

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

Whenever I'm in a situation in which I make someone feel old, I like to remind them that I was alive during the Reagan administration. Alas, I have not yet created a comeback to their retort, "Yeah, but what of it do you remember?" See, while I may have been born in the 80s, I was a 90s kid, through and through. The 80s to me were just a decade in which people wore strange clothing that was usually too tight. And they often had haircuts you could set your watch to.

But something happened when I got to college: 80s music began to rock. By this point, the songs were 20-some-odd years old, but KISS, Guns 'n' Roses, and Twisted Sister didn't earn a quick "change the station" moment when I heard them on the radio. The Coolidge Corner Theatre had a singalong tonight of those 80s hair band songs I loved to pretend I remembered.

My friend and I got really into it, banging our heads in time with the rhythm of "I Wanna Rock". Dee Snider can do it, why can't we? Oh, yeah, he had a lot more hair. Well, that wasn't going to stop us! Between the ineffectual hair flinging, the bellowing of whatever lyrics and melodies we knew, and the mouthing along of the ones we didn't, we had the 80s music bits pretty well covered, I thought.

But then they gave us inflatable electric guitars. Real live "air" guitars. Because I apparently needed more encouragement to go completely crazy. The Adam Sings in Front of Strangers series continued tonight with attempts at "Livin' on a Prayer" and "The Final Countdown," neither of which I should ever dare to try again. It's a good thing the music was loud and everybody else was going for gusto, cause I think I missed a few notes here and there. I haven't been able to hit Bon Jovi notes since it actually was the 80s.