[LINK] "Guelph 80s family ends year of living in the past"

[rfmcdonald]

CBC reports on an Ontario family that lived the past year as if they were in the technological environment of the 1980s. I don't necessarily get the point of this project--the ability to live without something doesn't necessarily prove much--but, hey, more power to them for trying.

For one year, a family of four from Guelph has been living the low-tech life – no phones, no computers – and embracing what is arguably the most universally unflattering haircut: the mullet.

Blair McMillan, 27, his partner Morgan Patey, 28, and their two sons Trey, five, and Denton, three, have spent the last year playing an elaborate game of make-believe, pretending it is the year 1986 — the year Blair and Morgan were born.

They even dressed the part, with mullets for dad and the two boys, an 80s-inspired hairstyle for Morgan, and vintage clothing for all.

On Monday, their year of living in 1986 will come to an end and they will head gradually, with some reluctance, into 2014. The following is a condensed and edited conversation with Blair McMillan on his last day living as though he were in the 80s.

Sample answer:

It was a real positive experience. It's actually kind of bittersweet, knowing it's ending. We had a lot more fun than we expected. When the project first started there was a lot of anxiety and Morgan was really nervous about giving up her iPad and her smartphone and it was almost like we lived in a whole different world than anyone else. I think it would just be sad going back to everything because we had a lot of positive experiences. But obviously the way the world is in 2014, it's impossible to live your life like that because eventually you won't have any friends left because you're such a nuisance communicating with everybody else.

The most challenging part would have been that we are out of the loop with everybody else. And we did live in our own little box in our house because we kind of cut ourselves off from the rest of the world because the only way we could talk to people was to call, and nobody does that as much anymore.

Obviously, we still talk to a lot people but I think people just kind of forgot about us because we're weren't...[into] texting, we're not in emails and things like that...we're not on Facebook so you can't invite us via Facebook. So we're kind of in our own little world so that was hard, obviously, and it'll be nice to get back into knowing what's going on and things like that."