I’m always telling people, especially those who visit my apartment, that I’m one of, if not the most, nostalgic person you’ll ever meet. I realize it’s not the healthiest of practices, but in a lot of ways, I live in the past. Specifically, my childhood, because I had a good one. And I find that those memories if recalled and applied to your adult life during times of stress and sadness, can actually bring a smile to your face. I know this is true for others as well because I hear about it all the time on my 80s Instagram account, @mom_gave_them_away. I’ve had that account for years, posting pictures from 80s movies I watch or photos of my absurd vintage toy collection. And on every single post, I always get multiple comments from grown-ass men thanking me for making them cry because they hadn’t thought of that obscure Zoids robot or Legions of Power playset in 35 years.

So, today while watching a block of 80s Saturday morning cartoons on YouTube (complete with original commercials), I thought I’d write my first entry in a series of ‘Thank You’ pieces to the 80s. And I’m starting with arguably the most cherished children’s ritual of the 80s: the Saturday morning.

I often talk about how the 80s was the most influential pop culture decade in American history. There was no time before it that was remotely as saturated in the arts and entertainment. Everything from colors to movies to music was turned up to 11. Since the 80s there have been decades that have had their fair share of similar cultural influences on greater American society, but not in as much abundance, and very few lasting effects.

And as a kid in the 80s, there was arguably no greater phenomenon than the Saturday morning ritual. I’m sure from house to house it may have differed slightly, but at its core, it was all built on the same foundation: cartoons. In my house, after a fun-filled Friday night of pizza, a VHS rental from the local mom-and-pop video store, and camping out in a homemade fort in the living room, I’d wake up sometime around way-too-early for-a-Saturday and scurry into my parents’ room to ask if I could wake up. Upon getting the proper authorization from my mom, I’d scurry back to my sleeping bag on the living room floor and turn the TV on. I’d wait for the set to warm up as the screen charged with static electricity, and turn the giant dial, thumping through the channels to find a cartoon that I recognized.

I’d never look at the TV guide, and I didn’t know which channels were which. So, the show I landed on had to be a good one, because once I chose a program, I was committed to at least the next half hour on that channel. There might be a better show on a different network, but if I turned the dial while a commercial was playing, I might never find my way back. I had my list of must-see TV for the morning, shows I looked forward to all week long. But something I enjoyed just as much, and even more memorable in my brain today, were the unique bumpers as they cut to and returned from commercial breaks. And then there were the PSAs and stuff like ABC’s Computer Critters and O.G. Readmore that would teach you something in between having your brain melted by Packman, Transformers, or Alvin and the Chipmunks.

For a lot of kids, a big bowl of sugar cereal was a key component of their Saturday morning. But in my house, it was a can of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls. And this was where my morning got bittersweet because there was cinnamon roll math. There were five of us. My mom and dad, myself, and my little brother and sister. And that can only held eight rolls, which meant that one of us wasn’t getting two. And I wanted the whole can. Luckily, my mom didn’t really eat that kind of stuff, and my dad would usually just eat one. But he would definitely make sure to have that one and that we all knew he had one. It was kind of his way of saying that he was the one who worked hard for the money that bought that can of cinnamon rolls, and that if he wanted to, he could eat the entire can himself. So, seven cinnamon rolls between three kids.

Now, my brother and I often joke about how we don’t really remember my sister eating things or doing things, or even really being around anywhere while we were growing up. And my sister will even attest to it that she also doesn’t really remember being around as a kid either. But she was, we have pictures. She was just kind of a non-kid until about the age of 14. But what this meant for Saturday cinnamon rolls was that we’d toss her one in the shadowy corner where she sat in a kid-sized rocking chair brushing the hair of her Rainbow Brite doll, and my brother and I would have three rolls each. And that worked for me.

Saturday morning cartoons typically got rolling around 6am, but they’d hold the really good stuff until all the kids got “permission to wake up” and had enough sugar in their blood to be conscious enough to remember what toys the commercials were telling them they needed. A much-maligned facet of the childhood experience in the 80s that I still don’t have a problem with. We needed those toys to complete the Saturday morning experience. If I didn’t have Optimus Prime and Strongheart sitting next to me watching me watch them in their own cartoons, then nothing would have made sense to me, my cinnamon roll math would have been way off, and I’d probably wake up Saturday mornings and take a bath or something.

Every ingredient was key to ensuring the Saturday morning experience was not just enjoyed, but fully absorbed, because it had to last you seven whole days. Which brings me to the bitter part of the sweetest day of my childhood week. I can still feel the cloud that would creep in around 11am as all the network’s programming started to transition from colorful, sugary, robotic dragon-slaying glee to “Who the hell is in charge here, and why are they taking my fun?”

Between 8am and 10am on a Saturday, the world was perfect. There was no cold war, no nebulous sister in the corner, no life-lesson-giving dad, and no end to the highlight of the week. But as the closing credits music to Dungeons and Dragons played, I knew that my and Saturday morning’s time together was running out. To this day, that’s still my favorite cartoon. But seeing that amusement park where the kids got sucked into the realm of Dungeons and Dragons, and realizing that the park was in the real world where they were trying to get back to, really landed the fact that there was no Uni, no mean little man playing tricks on terrified kids being chased by a demon on a horse, and that eventually those kids were going to be barfed back into reality and have to take baths and go to school again. And in my world, mom was about to make us clean up our toys, put our sleeping bags away, take the fort down and do something productive like return the VHS we rented the night before. And to this day I still get a bit melancholy when I hear that D&D music.

But I always knew that no matter how long the week seemed and no matter how much homework I had, there was always next Saturday. And now I’m here, on a Saturday, as a grown-ass, 47-year-old “adult” writing about one of the most important, and fun, and exciting things I got to experience every weekend of my childhood. A shared experience that I and millions of kids from that era absolutely adored and are still doing. And the only thing that’s really changed from then to now? I get to eat the entire can myself.