I drafted this post, oh, about six months ago. I decided it was time for a little something more upbeat, so I'm pulling this from my draft vault. It's frivilous, it's fun, and we can all take a trip down memory lane together to see the crazy antics I got up to in my younger years. So, here goes...
That's probably a better title than what this post is intended for, but I'm feeling a bit happily nostalgic tonight.
It started with viewing this bit by Buzzfeed two days ago entitled, 32 Extremely Upsetting Facts About the Class of 2017. Tonight I was brought back to the same place by these two Buzzfeed collections; The Typical Day of A Kid In The Early 90s and The Typical Day of A Teenage Girl In The Late 90s.
Now, having been born in 1980, I officially became a teenager in 1993 and by societal standards I was "too old" to watch cartoons. While I know what societal standards are (even then), I never really followed them. Not because I wanted to do the opposite, I just did what I wanted, which happened to be the opposite.
Class of 2017
05-A: I adored 10 Things I Hate About You and Never Been Kissed. Even at nineteen I didn't care if I was seeing high school teen films, who cares! I saw American Pie, well after it had been referenced into the ground, around 2005. She's All That, I went to see with this girl I sorta knew. It was fun and I did like it, but not as much as the first two I mentioned.
That was a weird night actually, when I went to see She's All That. The girl and I had a mutual friend in common. The two of us were really merely acquaintances. But, I called her up. We saw the film and afterwards went to eat Chinese food. I was (well, am) an odd person. There was a bit of something in my chicken dish and I proceeded to move it to the side of my plate and said it must be the andrenal gland of a rat or something. It really did look an andrenal gland, even though I was merely joking. My boyish nature and love of scientic things ultimately meant that we never hung out again.
05-B: Family Guy I do really like, but didn't get into this until around 2004... because of a boy. Not for a boy, as in I only liked it to impress him because he liked it. But because of a boy, as in he tuned in to it, we watched it and I loved it.
06: The only boy band I ever liked was New Kids On The Block. Not when they relaunched as KNOTB later, just when they originally came out and I was eight. Though I did know of the 90's boy bands, I just didn't listen to them. Oh wait. There was the British boy band that didn't do much stateside, named BBMak. Yeah, I was sort of into them.
10: Gaming consoles. I've only ever played original Atari, Original Nintendo, XBox, PS2, and a Wii; which are also all the gaming consoles I ever owned.
14: I can't imagine growing up in a world other than when the original Star Wars films were new and not titled "original". Although I can't imagine a world with only Star Wars, but I bet it was epic seeing it in the theatre for the first time ever. But I will say that I was so so super excited for Epi I when it came out. I didn't like it as much as the original one's (because they hold a soft spot in my heart), but Epi I as well as Epi's II and III, I thoroughly enjoyed. I own them on DVD and am not ashamed to admit that I liked them from the get go, unlike other die-hard Star Wars fans who vehemently nay-say against them. That's cool if they do, but then no one wants to speak up when they, in fact, do like them... except this gal right here!
19-B: Oh man... that Nintendo cereal just brings up an entire topic of cereal. There were so many crazy specialty cereals when I was growing up. I can't even remember half of them. Most of them probably weren't even good, but like all the other kids, I wanted them. Actually, I wanted just about any cereal targed for kids, because all that was allowed in my house were Cheerios, Honey Nut Cheerios, Apple Cinnamon Cheerios, Rice Krispies, Rice Chex, Corn Flakes, Honeycomb, Sugar Smacks, and sometimes Apple Jacks, but mainly those first five. My childhood friend was allowed Lucky Charms and Frosted Mini Wheats, which I gladly ate during sleep overs at her house. Also there were BooBerry and Frankenberry at my maternal grandmothers house and Honey Graham Oh's!, and the oh so grody to kids, Raisin Bran at my paternal grandmothers house. Otherwise, I had to try all of the stuff in my late teen and early college years; Cap'n Crunch Berries, Honey Grahams, Smorz, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cookie Crisp, Marshmallow Krispies, Fruit Loops, Fruity Pebbles, Frosted Flakes, Trix, etc.
21: Oh, how I adored Boy Meets World!
22: As I stated about cartoons in my intro, I was 15 (soon to turn 16) when Blues Clues first aired. I'm not really sure how it was possible, perhaps they had double showings in a day? I didn't record it, but I was somehow able to, without skipping school, watch 95% of the Blues Clues epi until Steve left the show in 2002 (I was 21). I was not the only one of my peers who enjoyed watching it, or was able to see every epi. Ok, two, there were only two of us. He was a boy. We also enjoyed The Telly Tubbies. Anyways.
I had the biggest crush on Steve; actually in my girlhood way, I was completely in love with him. My guy friend and I would get up and sing and dance the intro song, the mail song and any other song. We'd follow along in our own clue books complete with green crayon wrapped in paper that matched Steve's shirt. We had our own Blue Stuffed animal to watch the show with. I was there when baby Paprika was born to her French parents Mrs. Salt and Mr. Pepper. I was there when Periwinkle the cat was introduced. I was verklempt when Steve left and we just couldn't continue watching when his "younger brother" Joe took over.
Later a friend sent me a current article about Steve Burns in about 2005. It was pretty similar to the one posted for #22. I was sad, sad, sad.
24: I didn't have a mobile until I was 24. It was my sisters old flip phone (like the open flip phone in the photo) so she could get a newer model.
25: I watched SpongeBob SquarePants religiously for the first four years. I especially like Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy and both I and my Blues Clues friend adored Plankton. That was a great show, though I'm wondering how they have material still for epi's as it's still on the air?
26: Oh god! I didn't even need to read what the building was. I knew it instantly even without all the crazy designs painted on the facade; The Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando Florida. I remember Nickelodeon having a huge hoopla and to-do leading up to the opening of the studio. A week long in-between programming extravaganza where they talked about it, showed sneak peaks, had telephone numbers for you to call to win stuff, and I don't even remember what else. And on the day that the studio officially opened it was an all day television party. It was the middle of summer vacation and I was nine years old. And it's a memory that I remember fondly. I didn't win anything during the week leading up to or on the actual day of the unveiling, but I watched with baited breath and excitement until the big unveiling and then all I could do on the day of was watch in wonder and dream of going there. But I never was able to go and visit. And I was a little more than upset when I found out they shut it down back in 2005.
29: I actually had a Furby. The same Blue's Clue's loving guy friend gave it to me. I have no idea how he obtained it, perhaps I did at the time. I put it in my car though, to freak out passengers. Come to think of it, people were always giving me things, and they were the oddest items too. A different friend came up to me at school, handed me a book and said, "Here, I stole this for you." She specifically stole me a hardbound copy of Marilyn Mansons autobiography. On purpose! I did actually read it, it wasn't half bad, but what the hell, man? Thanks...? The Furby friend? Yeah, he quite possibly stole it. Who steals a Furby to give to their friend? Who steals lots of things to give to one person? It's not like I was some awesome demi-god of slacker high school kids, but you would think so from this. There were other items, that I never requested mind you, that were stolen for me, but I can't recall all of them now.
32: I remember petrol prices when I was growing up looking like this. I remember my parents complaining when it was 99 cents. I do have one memory that makes me sound like one of those old people complaining about young kids today. Or I could Sophia Patrillo it up a little? Picture it. Summer Vacation. 1996. The time in summer where they raise petrol prices. I could go to the Shell Station by my dad's jewelry store and fill the tank in my hand-me-down Caribbean Green '92 Ford Taurus for $20. TWENTY DOLLARS!!! When I was 19 I could take a $20 bill to the discount tobacco place on the corner of HWY 49 and Hardy Street, buy an entire carton of Camel Wides and be handed back jingle change.
Early 90's Kid
01. Saved By The Bell. I couldn't get enough of this show. And Zach Morris. *swoon!* Though I also equally liked the Disney prequel before NBC picked it up and shoved them into high school. Good Morning, Miss Bliss! with Hayley Mills.
02. Never owned anything LA Gear, but oh did I want to! But of course I had a jean jacket (with buttons covering it) and wore neon. Who didn't, right?
03. I didn't really ever wear hair gel, but I saw this photo of Barbie and realized that I knew that dress. I had completely forgotten that I had this Barbie until seeing this photo. Totally Hair Barbie is right, look at ALL that hair! It was a little off putting and I wasn't into hair gel, not even for a Barbie, but that is an awesome dress, right?!
04. No neon shoe laces except in shoes. But yes to crazy barrettes.
07. We had to sell wrapping paper and tinned food items (cookies and chocolates and caramels oh my!) The only thing I ever earned by hitting the beat, pedaling my wares to nervous home owners was a patch for selling Girl Scout Cookies. I liked being in Girl Scouts but woo friggin do. EVERYONE got a patch who sold at least one box. It all actually reminds me of an epi of Invader Zim, where they're telling the kids about all the awesome stuff than can win, but for the loser prize that they added after the video was finished. It's a dubbed over robotic voice stating the prize will be "an adhesive medical strip." Makes me laugh every time I see that epi or even just randomly think of it. Because it is so very true.
08. Choose Your Own Adventure, man. Those were awesome and I'd constantly cheque them out of the school library. While I didn't read Goosebumps, I was all into some R. L. Stine's Fear Street. Read a few books of The Babysitter's Club, but I actually enjoyed the made for TV movie more than the books.
09. Yep, slap bracelets were cool. Everybody had them, until they kept attacking (non violently) fellow school mates or constantly slapping them in class.
10. Trapper Keepers were a huge deal. A HUGE deal. I realize now, the reason they were a huge deal was mainly because they were a status symbol. Everyone who was anyone had one. But, that also isn't fool proof. I had one. I had one because they were just insanely awesome. I didn't know that one obtains one so as to fit in. Didn't work though. I was still labled a loser. That's fine, I still had an insanely awesome school binder, so nah!
11. I don't even know where I got this, but I was the only kid with one. It was super high tech for middle school. It was epic, actually. And because I wasn't "cool" enough to own one, some popular snob stole it. Oh well, it was just a pencil case. I'm got over it pretty quickly.
12. It wasn't Scholastic News, no our teacher would record the news at night and show us the next day. We watched the entire Persian Gulf War this way. We'd also watch news or read newspaper articles about President Bush and VP Dan Quayle. We didn't really understand most of what we were seeing or reading, but we knew enough that it was the funniest thing around the fourth grade block that Dan Quayle couldn't spell potato correctly.
When I was in the seventh grade my class went to the library to watch the live coverage of Bill Clinton winning the presidency.
13. We had an Apple II Computer Plus that my grandmother gave me. I played Math Blaster on that. When I attended Sacred Heart Catholic School during 5th and 6th grade we were occasionally allowed to play on the computers... and we played Oregon Trail. Didn't have actual computer class until freshman year of high school and after two months of learning computer stuff we spent the next three playing Oregon Trail. Junior year I took typing. I was exited to be learning on a typewriter, only I'd missed that by about eight years. We learned on computers. Mainly we just played Oregon Trail.
15. I didn't stop playing MASH until I was about 26 or 27. There was always a bit of down time with friends where it was just necessary to fill the void and spark up conversation again.
17. Holy OMG Batman!! This was the most fantastic thing ever. Every kid salivated when the teacher stood in front of the class holding those thin paper pages clutched in her arms, teasing us before she passed them out. We'd all spend ten minutes poring over them selecting everything we wanted. Later our parents would throw it away or edit our selections. And when the orders arrived we'd be hopping up and down in our seats to get our hands on it. Or we'd be so very, very sad, sitting low in our chairs, wishing we weren't missing all of the fun. I wasn't allowed to order every time this came around, but I was allowed to get a few things once in a while.
Of course that ranked 1st on unexpectedly awesome school things. The second place spot goes to book fairs. Everyone was excited about book fair day. Third would be bake sale day. It was awesome, but none of us seem to think that it ranked near book fair day or book order form day (and more importantly the arrival of packages day)
24. I watched the hell out of The Little Mermaid. I'd pretend at the local pool that I was Arial. Mainly the part where she launches herself out of the water onto that rock in the middle of the bay while singing and the part where she get's her legs and has to swim all the way to the surface and burst forth from the water. Yeah, I was that kid at the pool.
Late 90s Teen Girl
03. That's a Delia's catalog. I loved looking through the Delia's catalog. I loved the look of the outfits and the accessories, but was never allowed to have anything out of it. Generally I wore men's t-shirts, mainly with bands that I listened to or something to do with Star Wars or skateboarding. And either military issue combat boots or converse high tops. I didn't prefer the high tops, but that's what they had at the Salvation Army. If it was cold, I would wear a long sleeved shirt under my t-shirt and a skull cap.
But! With the lunch money I saved from not eating lunch, I was able to shop accessories at Claire's on my Friday night forays to the mall with my friends. So, I did have a purple tattoo necklace and a set of black hair clips with rhinestones, though not butterfly clips.
04: My sister worked at The Gap, which meant discounts. I did have a few girlier clothing items that came from there, like a few baby tee's (but without any slogans or something cutesy on it) and a cardigan, as well as some awesome jeans from the male side of The Gap. Also, Earth Perfume and purple glitter eye shadow.
05: As far as glitter, the only eye shadow I had was from the Gap, which I mentioned previously. But I did have glitter nail polish, which I used to have my own Christian Dior polish. I saw it in a magazine advertisement and it looked like space. It was black with coloured glitter. You still can't get Dior here, much less in 1996, besides the fact that I never would have had the money to purchase it. But a 99 cent bottle of black nail polish picked up at a drug store during the halloween season (because that's the only time they sold it until recently) and a mini bottle of glitter nail polist that some girl stole for me from the Limited Too (I don't even...) at the mall gave me an exact copy of Dior's awesome 1996 high fashion outer space nail polish.
No one had done that before Dior came out with it. No one in my town was doing it, except me. Most people thought it was weird. A few thought it was cool. I always told people I saw it in a Dior ad. Most of them didn't know who Dior was or much less that it was high fashion. If any of you have seen the telly show Ugly Betty, I was the Justin Suarez of the show back in 1994 (only I dressed more like Ugly Betty). All I watched was Fashion TV on VH1. Needless to say that I was alone through high school in my love of couture fashion and knowledge of designers.
06: This one gets included because they mention Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I had always wanted to watch Buffy, but never did until I spent the weekend at a friends house, in 1999. I still have never seen every epi, but I hear it's streaming on Netflix, so I have no excuse not to watch it all now. Except it will have to wait until I am through re-watching Supernatural.
09: Haha. No one I knew owned a beeper. My dad did sell them for awhile, but as far as teenagers went, that was too Clueless for the likes of a small town in south Mississippi.
14: Ok, yes, Snapple was a pretty big deal. Just about every one drank it. Actually now that I'm reading that, I can almost taste it and now I want a Snapple. Do they even make those anymore? I don't know, I haven't had one since 1998.
17: Yes, I did have a subscription to Seventeen Magazine. In my opinion it was much better than YM, which I'd been able to look through because some friends subscribed to that one. There was also some British magazine I was able to get a hold of, though I'm not sure how. Anyway, I subscribed to it for a year and it was better than any stateside teen girl magazine. It was so much better, in fact, that in one of the issues came a very cool 90's styled tarot deck. I used the hell out of that thing until it practically disentigrated a few years ago.
18: They are not kidding here either, people. Whether your service provider was AOL or not, every kid went home, started up their dial-up internet and logged onto AOL Messenger. Here, everyone had a home computer by 1997. Once that happened you could no longer call your friends on the telephone to talk or make plans, because they were all online. It would be three or four years before anyone got a second house phone line and years after that before the world switched to non dial up. So, whether you wanted to spend an evening chatting with people or just wanted to get your friend to go out with you, you had to get on and find them. It was also difficult to pull people away from the internet once they were on it.
Granted there wasn't a lot to do, not even in 1997, but it was so new and there was enough to occupy your time. My time was spent in the online RPG game of Furcadia, talking to people in chat rooms, or doing research on historical things, as well as Cryptozoology and Paranormal things. It was actually easier then to find actual things meeting those search criteria than today. And there was a lot of fun in the few people we met from over the internet, or that one time I used a precurser to Skype to talk to some guy in New Zealand.
19: It seems weird now that building a website was even a thing back then, much less the fact that it was all about you, the builder. Those were some crazy sites we came up with. For the record, I used Geocities. I'm not even going to try and see if they, yes they, are cached anywhere. Too weird.
21: Oh yes, I had many a mix tape that I'd made for myself or were given. It seemed better to make a mix tape, than a mix CD too. I'm not sure if we put more thought and effort into or what.
22: I rarely called anyone when I was watching TV. I don't think my friends were watching the same things as me anyways. I watched a lot of documentaries, plus all of this stuff.
Cartoon Network
Fox
23: Glow in the dark stars were a big thing. Glow in the dark anything was really popular in the late 90s. Everyone I knew had glow in the dark stars on their ceilings and walls. My sister and I purchased glow in the dark nail polish at some sciency store in a big city mall. That stuff was really cool too.
That's probably a better title than what this post is intended for, but I'm feeling a bit happily nostalgic tonight.
It started with viewing this bit by Buzzfeed two days ago entitled, 32 Extremely Upsetting Facts About the Class of 2017. Tonight I was brought back to the same place by these two Buzzfeed collections; The Typical Day of A Kid In The Early 90s and The Typical Day of A Teenage Girl In The Late 90s.
Now, having been born in 1980, I officially became a teenager in 1993 and by societal standards I was "too old" to watch cartoons. While I know what societal standards are (even then), I never really followed them. Not because I wanted to do the opposite, I just did what I wanted, which happened to be the opposite.
Class of 2017
05-A: I adored 10 Things I Hate About You and Never Been Kissed. Even at nineteen I didn't care if I was seeing high school teen films, who cares! I saw American Pie, well after it had been referenced into the ground, around 2005. She's All That, I went to see with this girl I sorta knew. It was fun and I did like it, but not as much as the first two I mentioned.
That was a weird night actually, when I went to see She's All That. The girl and I had a mutual friend in common. The two of us were really merely acquaintances. But, I called her up. We saw the film and afterwards went to eat Chinese food. I was (well, am) an odd person. There was a bit of something in my chicken dish and I proceeded to move it to the side of my plate and said it must be the andrenal gland of a rat or something. It really did look an andrenal gland, even though I was merely joking. My boyish nature and love of scientic things ultimately meant that we never hung out again.
05-B: Family Guy I do really like, but didn't get into this until around 2004... because of a boy. Not for a boy, as in I only liked it to impress him because he liked it. But because of a boy, as in he tuned in to it, we watched it and I loved it.
06: The only boy band I ever liked was New Kids On The Block. Not when they relaunched as KNOTB later, just when they originally came out and I was eight. Though I did know of the 90's boy bands, I just didn't listen to them. Oh wait. There was the British boy band that didn't do much stateside, named BBMak. Yeah, I was sort of into them.
10: Gaming consoles. I've only ever played original Atari, Original Nintendo, XBox, PS2, and a Wii; which are also all the gaming consoles I ever owned.
14: I can't imagine growing up in a world other than when the original Star Wars films were new and not titled "original". Although I can't imagine a world with only Star Wars, but I bet it was epic seeing it in the theatre for the first time ever. But I will say that I was so so super excited for Epi I when it came out. I didn't like it as much as the original one's (because they hold a soft spot in my heart), but Epi I as well as Epi's II and III, I thoroughly enjoyed. I own them on DVD and am not ashamed to admit that I liked them from the get go, unlike other die-hard Star Wars fans who vehemently nay-say against them. That's cool if they do, but then no one wants to speak up when they, in fact, do like them... except this gal right here!
19-B: Oh man... that Nintendo cereal just brings up an entire topic of cereal. There were so many crazy specialty cereals when I was growing up. I can't even remember half of them. Most of them probably weren't even good, but like all the other kids, I wanted them. Actually, I wanted just about any cereal targed for kids, because all that was allowed in my house were Cheerios, Honey Nut Cheerios, Apple Cinnamon Cheerios, Rice Krispies, Rice Chex, Corn Flakes, Honeycomb, Sugar Smacks, and sometimes Apple Jacks, but mainly those first five. My childhood friend was allowed Lucky Charms and Frosted Mini Wheats, which I gladly ate during sleep overs at her house. Also there were BooBerry and Frankenberry at my maternal grandmothers house and Honey Graham Oh's!, and the oh so grody to kids, Raisin Bran at my paternal grandmothers house. Otherwise, I had to try all of the stuff in my late teen and early college years; Cap'n Crunch Berries, Honey Grahams, Smorz, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cookie Crisp, Marshmallow Krispies, Fruit Loops, Fruity Pebbles, Frosted Flakes, Trix, etc.
21: Oh, how I adored Boy Meets World!
22: As I stated about cartoons in my intro, I was 15 (soon to turn 16) when Blues Clues first aired. I'm not really sure how it was possible, perhaps they had double showings in a day? I didn't record it, but I was somehow able to, without skipping school, watch 95% of the Blues Clues epi until Steve left the show in 2002 (I was 21). I was not the only one of my peers who enjoyed watching it, or was able to see every epi. Ok, two, there were only two of us. He was a boy. We also enjoyed The Telly Tubbies. Anyways.
I had the biggest crush on Steve; actually in my girlhood way, I was completely in love with him. My guy friend and I would get up and sing and dance the intro song, the mail song and any other song. We'd follow along in our own clue books complete with green crayon wrapped in paper that matched Steve's shirt. We had our own Blue Stuffed animal to watch the show with. I was there when baby Paprika was born to her French parents Mrs. Salt and Mr. Pepper. I was there when Periwinkle the cat was introduced. I was verklempt when Steve left and we just couldn't continue watching when his "younger brother" Joe took over.
Later a friend sent me a current article about Steve Burns in about 2005. It was pretty similar to the one posted for #22. I was sad, sad, sad.
24: I didn't have a mobile until I was 24. It was my sisters old flip phone (like the open flip phone in the photo) so she could get a newer model.
25: I watched SpongeBob SquarePants religiously for the first four years. I especially like Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy and both I and my Blues Clues friend adored Plankton. That was a great show, though I'm wondering how they have material still for epi's as it's still on the air?
26: Oh god! I didn't even need to read what the building was. I knew it instantly even without all the crazy designs painted on the facade; The Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando Florida. I remember Nickelodeon having a huge hoopla and to-do leading up to the opening of the studio. A week long in-between programming extravaganza where they talked about it, showed sneak peaks, had telephone numbers for you to call to win stuff, and I don't even remember what else. And on the day that the studio officially opened it was an all day television party. It was the middle of summer vacation and I was nine years old. And it's a memory that I remember fondly. I didn't win anything during the week leading up to or on the actual day of the unveiling, but I watched with baited breath and excitement until the big unveiling and then all I could do on the day of was watch in wonder and dream of going there. But I never was able to go and visit. And I was a little more than upset when I found out they shut it down back in 2005.
29: I actually had a Furby. The same Blue's Clue's loving guy friend gave it to me. I have no idea how he obtained it, perhaps I did at the time. I put it in my car though, to freak out passengers. Come to think of it, people were always giving me things, and they were the oddest items too. A different friend came up to me at school, handed me a book and said, "Here, I stole this for you." She specifically stole me a hardbound copy of Marilyn Mansons autobiography. On purpose! I did actually read it, it wasn't half bad, but what the hell, man? Thanks...? The Furby friend? Yeah, he quite possibly stole it. Who steals a Furby to give to their friend? Who steals lots of things to give to one person? It's not like I was some awesome demi-god of slacker high school kids, but you would think so from this. There were other items, that I never requested mind you, that were stolen for me, but I can't recall all of them now.
32: I remember petrol prices when I was growing up looking like this. I remember my parents complaining when it was 99 cents. I do have one memory that makes me sound like one of those old people complaining about young kids today. Or I could Sophia Patrillo it up a little? Picture it. Summer Vacation. 1996. The time in summer where they raise petrol prices. I could go to the Shell Station by my dad's jewelry store and fill the tank in my hand-me-down Caribbean Green '92 Ford Taurus for $20. TWENTY DOLLARS!!! When I was 19 I could take a $20 bill to the discount tobacco place on the corner of HWY 49 and Hardy Street, buy an entire carton of Camel Wides and be handed back jingle change.
 |
| Camo Day, Homecoming Week, 1995; I'm the girl less blurred, up front right |
Early 90's Kid
01. Saved By The Bell. I couldn't get enough of this show. And Zach Morris. *swoon!* Though I also equally liked the Disney prequel before NBC picked it up and shoved them into high school. Good Morning, Miss Bliss! with Hayley Mills.
02. Never owned anything LA Gear, but oh did I want to! But of course I had a jean jacket (with buttons covering it) and wore neon. Who didn't, right?
03. I didn't really ever wear hair gel, but I saw this photo of Barbie and realized that I knew that dress. I had completely forgotten that I had this Barbie until seeing this photo. Totally Hair Barbie is right, look at ALL that hair! It was a little off putting and I wasn't into hair gel, not even for a Barbie, but that is an awesome dress, right?!
04. No neon shoe laces except in shoes. But yes to crazy barrettes.
07. We had to sell wrapping paper and tinned food items (cookies and chocolates and caramels oh my!) The only thing I ever earned by hitting the beat, pedaling my wares to nervous home owners was a patch for selling Girl Scout Cookies. I liked being in Girl Scouts but woo friggin do. EVERYONE got a patch who sold at least one box. It all actually reminds me of an epi of Invader Zim, where they're telling the kids about all the awesome stuff than can win, but for the loser prize that they added after the video was finished. It's a dubbed over robotic voice stating the prize will be "an adhesive medical strip." Makes me laugh every time I see that epi or even just randomly think of it. Because it is so very true.
(watch from 0.46 seconds to the 2.00 minute mark)
08. Choose Your Own Adventure, man. Those were awesome and I'd constantly cheque them out of the school library. While I didn't read Goosebumps, I was all into some R. L. Stine's Fear Street. Read a few books of The Babysitter's Club, but I actually enjoyed the made for TV movie more than the books.
09. Yep, slap bracelets were cool. Everybody had them, until they kept attacking (non violently) fellow school mates or constantly slapping them in class.
10. Trapper Keepers were a huge deal. A HUGE deal. I realize now, the reason they were a huge deal was mainly because they were a status symbol. Everyone who was anyone had one. But, that also isn't fool proof. I had one. I had one because they were just insanely awesome. I didn't know that one obtains one so as to fit in. Didn't work though. I was still labled a loser. That's fine, I still had an insanely awesome school binder, so nah!
11. I don't even know where I got this, but I was the only kid with one. It was super high tech for middle school. It was epic, actually. And because I wasn't "cool" enough to own one, some popular snob stole it. Oh well, it was just a pencil case. I'm got over it pretty quickly.
12. It wasn't Scholastic News, no our teacher would record the news at night and show us the next day. We watched the entire Persian Gulf War this way. We'd also watch news or read newspaper articles about President Bush and VP Dan Quayle. We didn't really understand most of what we were seeing or reading, but we knew enough that it was the funniest thing around the fourth grade block that Dan Quayle couldn't spell potato correctly.
When I was in the seventh grade my class went to the library to watch the live coverage of Bill Clinton winning the presidency.
13. We had an Apple II Computer Plus that my grandmother gave me. I played Math Blaster on that. When I attended Sacred Heart Catholic School during 5th and 6th grade we were occasionally allowed to play on the computers... and we played Oregon Trail. Didn't have actual computer class until freshman year of high school and after two months of learning computer stuff we spent the next three playing Oregon Trail. Junior year I took typing. I was exited to be learning on a typewriter, only I'd missed that by about eight years. We learned on computers. Mainly we just played Oregon Trail.
15. I didn't stop playing MASH until I was about 26 or 27. There was always a bit of down time with friends where it was just necessary to fill the void and spark up conversation again.
17. Holy OMG Batman!! This was the most fantastic thing ever. Every kid salivated when the teacher stood in front of the class holding those thin paper pages clutched in her arms, teasing us before she passed them out. We'd all spend ten minutes poring over them selecting everything we wanted. Later our parents would throw it away or edit our selections. And when the orders arrived we'd be hopping up and down in our seats to get our hands on it. Or we'd be so very, very sad, sitting low in our chairs, wishing we weren't missing all of the fun. I wasn't allowed to order every time this came around, but I was allowed to get a few things once in a while.
Of course that ranked 1st on unexpectedly awesome school things. The second place spot goes to book fairs. Everyone was excited about book fair day. Third would be bake sale day. It was awesome, but none of us seem to think that it ranked near book fair day or book order form day (and more importantly the arrival of packages day)
24. I watched the hell out of The Little Mermaid. I'd pretend at the local pool that I was Arial. Mainly the part where she launches herself out of the water onto that rock in the middle of the bay while singing and the part where she get's her legs and has to swim all the way to the surface and burst forth from the water. Yeah, I was that kid at the pool.
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| Crazy cat eyeliner and NIN band shirt. Special note: purple tattoo choker |
Late 90s Teen Girl
03. That's a Delia's catalog. I loved looking through the Delia's catalog. I loved the look of the outfits and the accessories, but was never allowed to have anything out of it. Generally I wore men's t-shirts, mainly with bands that I listened to or something to do with Star Wars or skateboarding. And either military issue combat boots or converse high tops. I didn't prefer the high tops, but that's what they had at the Salvation Army. If it was cold, I would wear a long sleeved shirt under my t-shirt and a skull cap.
But! With the lunch money I saved from not eating lunch, I was able to shop accessories at Claire's on my Friday night forays to the mall with my friends. So, I did have a purple tattoo necklace and a set of black hair clips with rhinestones, though not butterfly clips.
04: My sister worked at The Gap, which meant discounts. I did have a few girlier clothing items that came from there, like a few baby tee's (but without any slogans or something cutesy on it) and a cardigan, as well as some awesome jeans from the male side of The Gap. Also, Earth Perfume and purple glitter eye shadow.
05: As far as glitter, the only eye shadow I had was from the Gap, which I mentioned previously. But I did have glitter nail polish, which I used to have my own Christian Dior polish. I saw it in a magazine advertisement and it looked like space. It was black with coloured glitter. You still can't get Dior here, much less in 1996, besides the fact that I never would have had the money to purchase it. But a 99 cent bottle of black nail polish picked up at a drug store during the halloween season (because that's the only time they sold it until recently) and a mini bottle of glitter nail polist that some girl stole for me from the Limited Too (I don't even...) at the mall gave me an exact copy of Dior's awesome 1996 high fashion outer space nail polish.
No one had done that before Dior came out with it. No one in my town was doing it, except me. Most people thought it was weird. A few thought it was cool. I always told people I saw it in a Dior ad. Most of them didn't know who Dior was or much less that it was high fashion. If any of you have seen the telly show Ugly Betty, I was the Justin Suarez of the show back in 1994 (only I dressed more like Ugly Betty). All I watched was Fashion TV on VH1. Needless to say that I was alone through high school in my love of couture fashion and knowledge of designers.
06: This one gets included because they mention Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I had always wanted to watch Buffy, but never did until I spent the weekend at a friends house, in 1999. I still have never seen every epi, but I hear it's streaming on Netflix, so I have no excuse not to watch it all now. Except it will have to wait until I am through re-watching Supernatural.
09: Haha. No one I knew owned a beeper. My dad did sell them for awhile, but as far as teenagers went, that was too Clueless for the likes of a small town in south Mississippi.
14: Ok, yes, Snapple was a pretty big deal. Just about every one drank it. Actually now that I'm reading that, I can almost taste it and now I want a Snapple. Do they even make those anymore? I don't know, I haven't had one since 1998.
17: Yes, I did have a subscription to Seventeen Magazine. In my opinion it was much better than YM, which I'd been able to look through because some friends subscribed to that one. There was also some British magazine I was able to get a hold of, though I'm not sure how. Anyway, I subscribed to it for a year and it was better than any stateside teen girl magazine. It was so much better, in fact, that in one of the issues came a very cool 90's styled tarot deck. I used the hell out of that thing until it practically disentigrated a few years ago.
18: They are not kidding here either, people. Whether your service provider was AOL or not, every kid went home, started up their dial-up internet and logged onto AOL Messenger. Here, everyone had a home computer by 1997. Once that happened you could no longer call your friends on the telephone to talk or make plans, because they were all online. It would be three or four years before anyone got a second house phone line and years after that before the world switched to non dial up. So, whether you wanted to spend an evening chatting with people or just wanted to get your friend to go out with you, you had to get on and find them. It was also difficult to pull people away from the internet once they were on it.
Granted there wasn't a lot to do, not even in 1997, but it was so new and there was enough to occupy your time. My time was spent in the online RPG game of Furcadia, talking to people in chat rooms, or doing research on historical things, as well as Cryptozoology and Paranormal things. It was actually easier then to find actual things meeting those search criteria than today. And there was a lot of fun in the few people we met from over the internet, or that one time I used a precurser to Skype to talk to some guy in New Zealand.
19: It seems weird now that building a website was even a thing back then, much less the fact that it was all about you, the builder. Those were some crazy sites we came up with. For the record, I used Geocities. I'm not even going to try and see if they, yes they, are cached anywhere. Too weird.
21: Oh yes, I had many a mix tape that I'd made for myself or were given. It seemed better to make a mix tape, than a mix CD too. I'm not sure if we put more thought and effort into or what.
22: I rarely called anyone when I was watching TV. I don't think my friends were watching the same things as me anyways. I watched a lot of documentaries, plus all of this stuff.
Cartoon Network
- Dexter's Laboratory
- Cow & Chicken
- Johnny Bravo
- Dragon Ball & Dragon Ball Z
- The Powerpuff Girls
- Ed, Edd, & Eddy
Nickelodian
- Blue's Clues
- Little Bear
- Spongebob Squarepants
- Rocket Power
- Keenan & Kel
- Hey, Arnold!
- The Angry Beavers
- The Wild Thornberries
Disney
- Even Stevens
- So Weird
- PB & J Otter
Educational Channels (PBS, History, Discovery, etc)
- Modern Marvels
- Antiques Roadshow
- The Teletubbies
- The FBI Files
- Cold Case Files
- Trading Spaces
- House Hunters
Primetime Sitcoms
- The Drew Carey Show
- Ellen
- Friends
- Seinfeld
- Monk
- 3rd Rock From The Sun
- Moesha
- Sabrina, The Teenage Witch
- Just Shoot Me!
- Dharma & Greg
- Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place
- Veronica's Closet
- Who's Line Is It Anyway?
- That 70's Show
- Will & Grace
- Futurama
Reruns
- Cybill
- The Golden Girls
- Northern Exposure
- Welcome Back Kotter
- The Jefferson's
Comedy Central
- Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist
- South Park
- Win Ben Stein's Money
MTV
- Daria
Fox
- Futurama
- Angela Anaconda
23: Glow in the dark stars were a big thing. Glow in the dark anything was really popular in the late 90s. Everyone I knew had glow in the dark stars on their ceilings and walls. My sister and I purchased glow in the dark nail polish at some sciency store in a big city mall. That stuff was really cool too.
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