When I was in late high school and college, mostly during the summers, I used to stay up and watch something called Owl Theater, but it didn't have a sexy hostess. It was just cheesy horror movies, and sometimes teensploitation from the 60s, or Avengers episodes, shown with lots of long commercial breaks, so that I would usually fall asleep during one of the commercial breaks.

Of course, the Owl Theater hostess is based on Elvira, who is based on Vampira, who is based on Morticia, who is based on, kind of, one of the vampire chicks in the original Dracula movie.

Yes, that's some pretty incredible cleavage she's got going on there. It's all done with bustiers and padding, you know.

Well, in this case, it's done with Photoshop, but you know what I mean.

That's true about teenagers being naturally nocturnal, although it wasn't known in 1983, when this story is set.

Although you'd think adults would remember it from when they were teenagers. Except — I get this weird feeling — that somehow having teenagers of your own automatically erases all memory of ever having been one.

After much inner debate, I decided to set the HSD storyline very definitely in a particular time period, that is, the autumn of my senior year in high school. Which makes it 1983. So I've been researching 1983, and I've discovered two things:

1. Scrolling past too much microfilm makes me motion sick, and

2. Mainstream fashions of the 80s — not punk or new wave or any of that, just, the things normal people wore — were a lot dumber looking than I remember.

Oh, the fun we'll have.