Marin was so totally a county of Dexters 25 years ago this week.

It was 1984, the year George Orwell prophesied a dystopian landscape of intellectual oppression and mindless conformity--and the scene was turning out to be even grodier than the Nineteen Eighty-Four author envisioned.

The same week Corey Hart's "Sunglasses at Night" broke the Billboard Top 10 and Revenge of the Nerds ranked as the number-one movie in America, the Sun voiced its contribution to youth culture with an end-of-summer Back to School issue.

Along with stories about Apple Macintosh computers ("are they a novelty?" queried Sun editors) and an in-depth analysis into the decline of punctuation, the paper rounded out the section with its "awesome to the max" back-to-school shopping recommendations for the coming school year.

And county youth, thanks to the Sun, would be pedaling their BMXs straight to Goobersville.

"As the grapes darkened and tomatoes drop," waxed Sun youth-style consultant Gayle Wittenmeier Mills, "gentle rumblings from minors tell you school's about to start and nothing fits anymore."

But a pair of year-old floods were the least of Marin tweens' problems--because the Sun's point of fashion reference, it turned out, was less haute couture from Pierre Cardin and more Tina Yothers from Family Ties.

"[My son used his junior high graduation money for the Vuarnet sunglasses and his earnings from neighborhood odd jobs for three Izod alligator polos," wrote Wittenmeier Mills, unaware that Child Protective Services considers the purchase of such garments as grounds for an impromptu house call.

"How about a camouflage shirt?" suggested the well-meaning, but woefully counterproductive writer to her future wet-willied innocents outside the Northgate Mall Mervyn's. "Everybody's wearing them, especially when they eat catsup and chocolate."

We won't even attempt to analyze the kind of twisted editorial board that would nourish its sucklings with such diametrically opposed condiments, but even the idea of slurping down a squirt of Heinz "ket-choco-lup" pales in comparison to the Sun's endorsement of showing up to homeroom in "corduroy skorts and knee-high socks."

As if sensing the dubious nature of her style counsel, Wittenmeier Mills then launched into a historic overview of the pre-rainbow-suspendered fashion industry: "It was actually spawned by the Industrial Revolution," tutored the writer. "With the new availability of clothes that came with mass production, and the idea that all people are created equal, less-than-noble folk began imitating the clothing of the rich."

But what the Sun's historical segue failed to explain was how the invention of the cotton gin led to imitating the clothing of Emmanuel Lewis and Soleil Moon Frye.

"While I may not be fashion-minded," confessed the honest-to-a-fault fashion writer as the shopping spree drew to a close, "I admit that when I see my son's elfish smile peek out from under his new [neon-blue over-sized beret and my children hold themselves a little straighter in their new Cosby-striped sweater vests, I'm glad we went."

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