This week I read, and was completely absorbed by, a book that was set in 1998, and I think that is the reason I have been awash in nostalgia. I don’t know what you were doing in 1998, but I was in grad school, taking step aerobics classes, and crushing it during Name That Tune night at the graduate students’ lounge.
I was so good at that game back then, and I could still crush it now, probably, provided all the tunes would be pre-Y2K (remember Y2K?). Disco? I can get down on it. 1970s folk or classic or mellow rock? Take it easy. Anything with a synthesizer, guitar riff, or drum solo? Yes. Grunge, country, pop, rap, techno beats? I can name it all. But I’m pretty hit and miss once we get into the 2000s, and I’m much more miss than hit when it comes to anything at all from the past decade; unless it was featured on the Peloton, I probably haven’t heard it.
There is a Peloton instructor who frequently teaches 80s themed rides, in which she always says that she admires us Gen Xers, who left the house with only “keys and a dream.” It’s true; if you wanted to meet someone at a bar, you just had to use your home phone to call their home phone, and then hope for the best. You had to look up places on a map, and if someone failed to meet up with you, then they failed to meet up with you, and that was the end of the story. You might find out later what happened, or you might not, but in any case, there was no way at all to track down a person. Or hardly any way. I remember when I worked as a waitress, sometimes I would get a phone call for a person desperate to get a message across to another person who was ostensibly in the restaurant, waiting. I would walk through the restaurant, looking for a person of the description provided for me. Are you Cheryl? You are? Dave’s going to be late.
In 1998, I had had an email address for about a year, and mostly I was the recipient of really stupid jokes, chain letters, or erroneous information about how antiperspirants caused cancer. It’s not unlike social media, to be totally honest. I did use it in a pen pal kind of way, though, to keep in touch with people who had moved away.
I still use email in this way for my former yoga students; one octogenarian lady in particular sends me very long emails about my old classes and all the people in them, and I send her long emails back about my life now. There are gaps of a week or more between our emails, which makes it feel like those long-gone pen pal days; she even starts every email with “thank you for your long letter,” which I love.
I was always a person who had a lot of pretty stationary and a lot of pen pals; I would write to my cousin Nikki in California (HI NIKKI), and most of these letters were about boys we liked and our summer vacations. I wrote to all my camp friends; if there is anything more intense and bonding than a week of summer camp when you’re thirteen, I don’t know what it is. I kept up that correspondence for years, even if I never saw that person again.
It reminded me a lot of something I heard about on a podcast recently, about what the hosts called “Little While Friends,” people you have an experience with or are friends with for just a little while, but you end up having them on your social media forever. Around 2010 or so, any time I met someone new, I would end up adding them as a friend on Facebook, which means that a solid percentage of my Facebook feed is made up of people I barely know, but I feel like I know, because I have experienced their entire life journeys over the years. I know about their kids, and their divorces, and their remarriages, and an alarming amount about their dietary and fitness odysseys.
That said, I do love Facebook, there’s no better way to keep in touch with people from my past and present, people who I feel warmly about simply because we have shared life experiences. Some of those life experiences are less savoury than others, but they are what makes us who we are.
My friend Jen (HI JEN) sent me that photo, circa 1992, which made me think of a meme I saw lately, about our high school signature scents: mine was cigarettes and Vanilla Fields perfume. I haven’t smoked anything in well over three decades, and I feel low-level shame that I ever smoked at all, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who carried perfume and mints after hanging out at the smoke doors at school. Isn’t it crazy that there WERE smoke doors?
Does anyone else remember butane curling irons? It says a lot that we didn’t accidentally light ourselves on fire, with all the smoking and excessive hairspray that was necessary for those weird hairstyles of that time. And beyond that, some of us were bringing butane curling irons to school – not me, but I coveted one. I had to make do with scrunching my hair in the girls’ washroom and spraying it with Aussie Sprunch Spray, then setting it with Salon Selectives. Given that I always had a lighter with me, it’s incredible I didn’t just combust right there. It’s probably good that I never had a butane curling iron.
I just discovered, upon googling, that butane curling irons are still in existence!
One thing that I wish was still in existence, or, at least, that I had kept some of my copies, is Sassy magazine. Sassy was, and remains, the best magazine for teen girls, because it treated them like actual intelligent humans. One of the most impactful articles I ever read in my young life was the one that they put out to explain the Gulf War and Operation Desert Storm, an event that, naturally, caused me much stress and anxiety. This article detailed the war from all viewpoints, including the Iraqi people and, separately, Saddam Hussein. It was the first time I had ever read anything that showed anything other than a North American point of view, and it was absolutely eye-opening and formative, and made me realize that things were not always black and white, and that what I read in our media was not always the whole story.
In addition to increasing my information about the world around me, Sassy was instrumental in the creation of my skin care and beauty routines. Unfortunately, the girls of the 80s and 90s were sadly misled. Much has been said about the “Sephora Teens” of today, with their Drunk Elephant products and their anti-aging serum usage at age 17, but I think they have the right idea. After all, where they are moisturizing and pampering, we were scouring our poor faces with St. Ives Apricot Scrub, followed by the sting of Sea Breeze astringent; it’s no wonder we were plagued with acne and redness. Suz (HI SUZ) reminded me of that weird little product, the Buf Puf, which we used for EXTRA exfoliation, and we should all be in awe that we didn’t erase our faces altogether. Maybe this was the precursor to today’s Instagram filters, where girls and women filter so much that facial features become obliterated. We were just trying to obliterate our faces physically, rather than digitally. Or maybe that was what we were doing with those deep cleansing mud masks that would dry and crack on our dear little faces, leaving trails of whitish dust in our wake.
Weekly Reading
My Last Innocent Year. Wow, wow, WOW! I loved this book so much, I don’t even know where to begin. It is an exquisitely but sparsely written novel about a young woman in her senior year of college who enters into a relationship with a visiting professor. Tale as old as time, right? WRONG. This was just so well done, and so real, that I did something I haven’t done since I read (and loved) Girls They Write Songs About: I slowed down the last few chapters because I didn’t want it to be over. It’s set in 1998, which, coincidentally, is when I was in grad school, and so this book gave me all the nostalgic feelings. It was just so resonant of a time in my life which was brief, but felt like an age, when it was all about small classes and big camaraderie, hard work and thesis writing, and also parties and romantic interludes, when we all were on a first-name basis with all our professors and knew a lot about their personal lives, which seems wild now. This book, though. The time period details are spot on. 1998 was also when Monica Lewinsky was in the news, which I have a lot to say about, but I will keep it to this quote from the book: “Monica had become every girl’s worst nightmare, the equivalent of having your seventh-grade diary read over the school loudspeaker or walking into class with a period stain on your pants. We identified with her, which should have made us kinder but instead made us mean.” This book resonated with me so much and made me wonder about paths not taken; every single character is so well developed and complex. I wish I could go back in time before I had read it, so I could have the pleasure of reading it again for the first time. This will be a reread for me in the future, I am sure.
The Women In The Castle. When I first read this book in 2018, I really enjoyed it and found it incredibly thought-provoking in terms of divisiveness between people in society. I don’t know if you remember 2018, but it was KIND of a divisive time? I saw this at the library (in large print, no less!) and thought I could do with a reread. After all, since my first reading we went through a pandemic, which has to be THE most divisive time in my memory, and also, here we are, deep sigh. I will say I enjoyed this book as much or even more than before, maybe because I knew what was coming. I will also say that, generally speaking, I think historical fiction is one of the hardest types of book to get right: the language and dialogue is tricky, and it’s often overwhelmingly difficult not to insert modern sensibilities into the past. BUT this book does an excellent job on both fronts – it can be a little “explainy” at times, but I think it’s really well done. It’s about three German women and their families who come together right at the end of WWII, through the efforts of Marianne, the widow of a member of the German Resistance. She brings in the other two women, both ostensibly widows of the Resistance, to help care for them and their families. This book really shows how people can contain multitudes, how complex humans and society can be, how people can get swept up and find themselves in places they cannot fathom, and, most of all, how interconnected we all are, and how we are all responsible for one another.
Well, it’s been a fun trip down memory lane this week; this week is going to be full of lovely things like a trip to the garden centre, lots of writing, and, most exciting, not one but two events with my lovely girlfriends. I hope you all have a beautiful week ahead of you. xo
Thanks for this blast from the past, Nicole… replete with awesome young babe Nicole pics!
I’m still partial to Aussie products and I’ve recently started to use Herbal Essences in the shower again and it really takes me back to the 1990s (and also that naughty ad) :). I legit shuddered at your mention of that St. Ives Apricot Scrub–I’d keep having bad reactions and keep thinking *I* was doing it wrong… No! That product was all wrong. I guess I’m going to have to read _My Last Innocent Year_ to continue on this nostalgia trip.
AHHHHHH I forgot about the Herbal Essences ads! I should buy some just for the nostalgia. I think we have very similar tastes in books, and so I think you might really love that book. It takes my breath away, thinking about it. It was just so good.
Well, you’re a little younger than me, so my memories of 1998 are different… but you also made me think back to my high school years. Yes- WHY was there a “smoking area” outside the school??? I liked the glimpse into “young Nicole’s” life- I’m laughing at the fact that you smoked. It doesn’t fit in with the yoga-loving Nicole that we know now- but it fits in with high school Nicole.
That’s quite a book review- My Last Innocent Year does sound really good. I want to read it!
Well, all I can say is that life is a journey, and who knows where we end up!
I really loved that book – but, as I said, I’m not sure if it’s for you or not. That’s your warning! But I loved it so much, it was everything I love in one book.
I never smoked, but I remember a courtyard designated for smokers at my high school (in the early to mid-80s). It’s crazy kids were allowed to smoke at school.
I was also in grad school in ’98, near the end of my Ph.D program at one university and teaching as an adjunct at another. I was mostly consumed with my dissertation, teaching, and obsessing about whether I was ever going to have a baby.
I like FB for just that reason, watching the lives of people I never would have stayed in touch with otherwise from the sidelines. It’s like a novel, with the cast of characters heavy on high school and college classmates (the ones they put you in touch with when you sign up) and people I met from the late aughts on, with those in the gap between largely missing.
Steph, I also love FB! People often have negative things to say about it but I love it. I have been able to keep in touch with people in a way that would be virtually impossible without it! Sometimes I will see a friend’s child who looks EXACTLY like the friend, when they were that age, and it’s really sweet.
Steph–Right behind you there. I’d just been admitted to my grad program so 1998 brings back those memories, but also I’d just arrived in the U.S., so I simultaneously felt very young and new…
My kids’ minds were absolutely blown and they were appalled when I told the, that we had a smoking patio in my HS. I retrospect it is insane that it was totally fine and accommodated for kids 14-18 to smoke at school, but at the time it was just . . . normal?
At the time it seemed totally normal!
Oh my gosh Nicole, those pants are great. I think I may have had the same pair; the color, the high waist, the weird bagginess at the top! Good times. I also see lots of cassette tapes behind you. Do you remember when CDs came out and you could subscribe to get a new one each month? I can’t remember the name of the service, but that was the coolest thing ever and I begged my parents to let me do it. I also did not really have an email address until college and then I did not really know what to do with it (aside from chain letters and jokes of course). We also had a forum that you could use if you were at an edu address, although I had no idea why I would need it!
My parents used to own a bar, and they often got phone calls for patrons. It kind of reminds me of the Simpsons and asking if Mike Rotch is at the bar… didn’t we have fun jokes with those phones? I was just telling a friend how our big exciting thing to do when in Jr High was to prank call people. When explaining to her 13 year old, you have to caveat that they could not see the number you were calling from! Imagine that. Also I remember when California imposed the no smoking rule in the 90s in bars; the patrons were so upset! To think, to have to go OUTSIDE to smoke was a crazy concept. I think CA may have been one of the first states to do this, don’t quote me on this! I know that when I was working in Louisiana in 2005, it was still allowed!
“Is there a Mr. Jass there? First name Hugh?”
COLUMBIA HOUSE! You’re thinking of Columbia House! I didn’t have it but my husband did, before we were going out. As a result, when we moved I found a whole box of really crappy CDs. Ah, good times. Who knew that we wouldn’t be listening to the whole of Hammertime in the year of our lord 2024.
Those pants are SO ridiculous, and yet, they may be stylish again now. They remind me of that old SNL skit about mom jeans. Don’t forget, you had to have a belt with them. And they were so high up that a crop top barely showed skin.
Columbia House! Thank you; I could not remember the name, but that is the one! Didn’t you get the first few for a penny then they jacked up the monthly price? It was my first lesson in reading the fine print.
PS are you saying that MC Hammer is not cool anymore? Get out.
Yes, that’s exactly how it worked!
What a wonderful post. 80s and 90s in the US look like so much fun! I was back in Russia in the 90s and it was a total shit show.
Oh I can imagine, Daria – that was such a rough time for Russia in every way!
In 1998, I was getting ready to have my first baby . . . who arrived end of June. The rest of the year was learning to be a new mom while Coach was a full time student.
I remember those curling irons. Girls at my high school carried then in their purses. I did not. My hair was so unbearably short, compliments of my mom’s self-taught, God-awful haircuts. I loved my salon selective. I loved the smell of it.
So funny that part of your marry this band member live in this area came true.
Woof, being a new mom while your husband was a full time student would have been quite the learning curve. You were so young!
Love this idea: “Gen Xers, who left the house with only ‘keys and a dream’.” I agree but would add a contacts case… just in case it got too smoky and I needed to remove them. But maybe that was just me!
Oooh, and a lipstick, that Revlon Love That Red wasn’t going to apply itself!
Omg, that view in the last picture! Gorgeous! I love the key and the dream thing. So true! It was a freedom we didn’t know we had and would never experience again. I have never heard of a butane curling iron. That is insane! We didn’t have smoke doors, but everyone smoked in the bathrooms at my junior high school. By high school, they could smoke outside in one spot at lunch. And I remember the smoke coming out of the teacher’s lounge!
In 1998, I had three kids under the age of 9. I was barely keeping my head above water. I missed out on a lot, but I’ve managed to catch up on most of the music, except grunge, which I just can’t get into. I was exactly like you with pen pals and trying to keep in touch with people from my past. I love that about both of us.
I love that about us too!
SMOKING IN THE GIRLS ROOM. That was not allowed at my high school but I remember some people doing it. Isn’t it wild to think of all the indoor smoking!
Those pants are top fashion again! Don’t you wish you’d kept them…haha?
Salon Selectives. I had not thought of that brand in decades! Blast from the past is right.
In 1998 I was still in middle school, about to move to another province (but didn’t know it yet). 1998 was a really tough period in my life, to be honest – looking back, 97-2000 were really pivotal years that forever changed me. I’m glad those years are behind me! I think I look back at it with fresh perspective for some of the things I lived through (HELLO THERAPY!) and it makes my heart hurt in new ways? Like I can appreciate now – far more than I could then – how I was just a kid trying to make sense of some not ideal situations. I’m reverse processing that stuff to make sense of how it impacted the years since. It’s hard and messy and wow I did not mean to get deep in this comment but it was only when I did the math and figured out: Oh, this happened in 98′ and this, too. Oh, and that. And I’m like, whoa: that was a big time for me.
Oh gosh, middle school years are across the board terrible, but moving to a new province would be really awful. I can really understand the reverse processing thing, and my heart goes out to little Elisabeth. xoxoxo
I think I would still read Sassy now, if it still existed. I loved it so much.
I like that concept of Little While Friends. I have quite a few of those on Facebook. The girl I was Physics lab partners with for one year of high school, an experience that for us was similar to being war buddies. The girl I was roommates with at summer camp for one week when I was 15, who is now a grandmother, and it is so fun for me that that one accidental meeting has lasted this long! It is one of the nice things I can say about Facebook.
I had a butane curling iron! There I was at lunch, heating up my portable curling iron in the bathroom, reapplying make-up and hairspray and heaven help us perfume. Then RUNNING THE CURLING IRON UNDER COLD WATER so I could put it back in my purse.
I remember babysitting and having NO WAY TO REACH THE PARENTS!! Sometimes they would leave the number of a NEIGHBOR, for in case of emergencies!
RUNNING THE CURLING IRON UNDER COLD WATER SWISTLE.
I do really love that about Facebook, it’s so fun to see people like this, decades after your time together.
The babysitting thing! I remember that, and I babysat tiny infants when I was 12 or 13. I remember having to call my mom for advice! Because of course you couldn’t call the parents, they had no phones!
Oh, just thinking about being a teenager and going to meet a friend in Boston, and we just had to find each other! Like, “let’s meet inside Park Street Station” and no texting about I’m on this side or I’m near that newsstand, just had to find each other! Crazy memories.
Actually, I remember one time going to the movies with a good friend and another person I didn’t like much, and we all went into the bathrooms after the movie, then the two of us couldn’t find the third one again! And I suppose she thought we ditched her, but we hadn’t, it was just really crowded and we didn’t see her anywhere. That isn’t happening today, is it.
C, those things happened all the time! Just…losing a friend somewhere, and having no way to find them. Meeting at the train station was a huge thing, and of course, depending on the train schedule, the time that you might meet someone was really fluid. We had to look for people! Crazy times.
It’s wild to think about how I used to get lost driving, look for a payphone, and then CALL MY PARENTS to see if they could help me 😛 like, what was I thinking? What could they do?! Those are some pretty epic pictures – to think of who we were when we think of who we are now is truly a trip!!
Hahaha Lindsay, did you ever just have to go and look at a street sign in the corner just to figure out where you were? Thank god for GPS, I have no sense of direction and without it, who knows where I would be? Literally! I could be anywhere, driving, lost.
Ah the 1990’s. Back when we knew smoking was bad for us but everyone did it anyway. Well, I never smoked but I sure wanted to a few times.
It was such a strange time, looking back on it now!
1998…my daughter was 2, and I had my first ‘tech’ job, meaning I work in the tech industry, but I am not technical. I met some friends there that are among some of my closest friends today. We bought our ‘starter’ house, the townhome where we still live today. Who know prices were going to do what they did? Or that we were going to go through recessions and lose jobs, not once, but twice? Oh, the things we didn’t know!
I love your thoughts on Facebook. I love it for the same reasons. I love having these little glimpses into the lives of people I was friendly with a long time ago, I like to see that they are doing well. My close friends are still my close friends, with a very few exceptions.
I love those pictures. The jeans are epic, and the smoking! We moved to Pennsylvania for 2 years, and it was during that time that the ‘no smoking in bars and restaurants’ thing happened. We came home to see family at Christmas, and went out to dinner, and everyone was standing in front of the bar, smoking. What? I had two thoughts at the time.
1. Why would you smoke if you couldn’t do it at a bar? I saw no other reason to smoke, the only time I enjoyed it was at a bar while drinking. Needless to say I didn’t smoke for long, just a short stint in college, I had given up long before this, and only smoked while out drinking.
2. Oh goodness, it’s NICE in here without all of that smoke!
I never had a butane curling iron (don’t even know what that means, but it sounds dangerous). I did have a big hobo purse, in which I carried a million key chains (with 1 key, it was a thing for some reason), a full sized hair brush, and a full sized can of Sebastian Shaper Plus Hairspray. And some makeup. And who knows what else. Good times. Later I cut back to a smaller purse, and only had 1 keychain, and promptly lost my house key.
Thanks for the book recs, I’m taking note of both of them.
ALSO – My little picture that pops up on my comments is just a bit more recent than your 1998 photo – it was taken in 2005, soon after I started blogging. I know that 1998 and 2005 FEEL pretty far apart, but looking back from 2024, not so much!
It’s funny how that is – 2005 is when I had my second baby, which is a world away from 1998. But then, many worlds away from 2024!
I didn’t smoke for long either, but it felt long at the time, if that makes sense! Life is such a strange and interesting journey, you just never know where it’s going to go. Or what kind of jeans you will be wearing! Ha! Those are so ridiculous.
The butane curling iron is exactly what it sounds like – a curling iron you didn’t have to plug in, it ran on butane. One of my girlfriends told me she used to travel with it in her carryon on the plane, which, wow, that seems nuts!
The hobo bag! I had one too.
What a fun trip down memory lane! A time of no cell phones and no internet! I loved writing and receiving letters! (And I stil do – it was so awesome to recieve the card you sent me!) I’m still good friends with my pen pal from Japan. We started writing when I was 12.
Oh yes, and all the intense exfoliation!!! You’re right – how did we not scrub our faces right off?
Oh Michelle, you still write your pen pal! That’s amazing! What a treasure that is. Did you keep a lot of the letters? I recently found a box of letters and it was just wonderful going through them.
I was in college not grad school but HARD SAME to all of this. The St. Ives and Sea Breeze combo– hahahahaha. I was camel lights and plumeria, so YES I actually POSTED THAT MEME.
THAT’S where I saw it! I couldn’t remember! It was you who posted. Also, lol on the camel lights. I smoked light cigarettes too, hashtag health.
1998… I was in 4th grade, lol. But I do remember Y2K – my grandpa was so afraid that he started buying cases and cases of rice and water. We were eating rice for a looooong time.
I can’t believe the SMOKING AREA. OMG. What a time. I’m still boggled by the fact that there was a smoking and non-smoking section in a restaurant, as if some imaginary line was going to keep me from getting secondhand smoke, argh.
Stephany, I remember smoking sections on airplanes! Just imagine that! It was pretty grim, to be honest.
The Y2K preparations! People were so worried!
In 1998 I was in grade 10 but a lot of this resonated for me still, I remember reading sassy magazine and using Ives scrub (yuck! The fact that it was literally painful on the skin should have clued me in that it was not a great product!)
I do miss the lack of smart phones and feel lucky to have grown up without them. At the end of the day do we need to have the ability to be in contact with everyone at any time? Nope, we all survived. Better to be present in the moment or even let your mind wander (or be bored!) sometimes. It’s hard raising kids now where they socialize so differently and I feel like something important of childhood is lost (not to be dramatic but it weighs on me).
That said, I’m just as hooked to my smart phone as the next person but it’s something I’m working on.
I know exactly what you mean, Leneigh. Sometimes I wish I had more photos of my teen years, but in retrospect, it’s probably for the best. And I think not having smart phones meant we were able to concentrate for longer periods – to just sit in a waiting room, for example, or flip through a magazine. I don’t disagree with you – I think the formative years of childhood are very different with smart phones.
I was in college in 1998 and it was such a glorious time to be in college. We were pre-cell phone, but still had email! What a life.
I do think about how even simple things like picking someone up at the airport was so much HARDER back then, but we didn’t even know it. We just knew that the flight was getting in at 7pm. Imagine sending your kids off on field trips and overnight camps without really having a way of getting in touch with them. When I leave the house now it’s a “wallet, keys, cell phone” check before I close the door, but back then it really was “emergency $10, keys” and you were done!
The emergency $10! Yes! Also – how DID we know when the plane was getting in? Did we know if it was going to be late? Probably just if we went to the terminal and found out. I was remembering the phone line you’d call to see what movies were playing in which theatre – that seemed to be the height of technology.
Man you are taking me ALL the way back with reminders of things such as the Buf Puf, which I’d forgotten all about, but which certainly traumatized my skin. Whew.
I’d never have met my husband if not for the lack of smart phones. A casual friend invited me to a party at his house in 1997. I went to dinner with friends before and then went to head to the party at about 11:30 (ah youth), but had lost the address. I knew the street, but not the house number. I called his home phone and in the way of house parties at that time, a random answered the phone and no one who lived at the house was there nor did the random person know the house number. Undeterred a friend and I headed over anyway. We figured we’d walk down that street until we found a house that looked like a party was going on (ah the 90s…). ANYWAY, we found a house with a party, but wanting to know if I was in the right place, I asked the first person I came to on the porch if it was my friend’s house – it was and the person I asked and I got to chatting. FF to 1999 we got married and have our 25 anniversary this summer. If we’d had cell phones I’d just have called my friend and never had to ask anyone if I was in the right place and likely never would have met H.
Maggie! What a great story!!! I totally remember the days of walking to the house that had the party – is this the right house? Hmm. No. Oh wait, it’s down the street! I absolutely love your story, it sounds like the makings of a novel!
I graduated university in 1998 and started teaching – at just 21 – almost 22. That feels incredibly young to be responsible for 28 some odd students in grade one and two. Not to mention the stress. But I do love thinking about Sassy magazine! We actually named our cat SASSY because of it and the word was so popular. Also I can remember the smell of those curling irons heating up, the hair and skin products and everything. Not to mention just going out and meeting people with no phones. The world certainly was different, much of it for the better I think.
Your cat was Sassy!!! What a great magazine that was.
My BFF was also teaching at that age and wow, doesn’t that seem crazy young?
The Precursor to instagram filters. HA! You crack me up.
I do love the term Little While Friends; so very true.
I had forgotten about butane curling irons, but you are right, we were all very flammable in the 1980’s/1990’s! I also used to smoke. I know, so freaking gross. It’s been about three decades since I stunk. 🙂
I honestly believe life was simpler before smart phones, GPS, and social media. We were who we were and we were not so concerned about what other people are doing, or how they looked!
Life was so much simpler! And there was no photographic evidence of all the shenanigans. Or, not much photographic evidence!
In 1998 I was in the final years of high school – I graduated in 1999. And I vividly remember Y2K because I was recovering from having my tonsils and adnoids removed during the winter break. So it was memorable but not for a good reason because having that surgery at age 18 was horribly painful! But so worth it as I had chronic tonsilitis that fall.
I have considered reading My Last Innocent Year. I think the author of it just wrote a guest essay on Cup of Jo this winter or spring. Now I will definitely read it! My reading has continued to be epically ho hum which is frustrating. I’ve abandoned a couple of books this month and it’s only the 11th!!
I loved that book so much – I hope you do too! Abandoning books is better than what I usually do, which is to grind through and then regret all the time I spent on it!
You and I would have gotten along so well. While I never smoked, I did write long letters – and later emails – and I miss that most people have abandoned emails and everything (literally everything is done through Whatsapp or Instagram these days). I still appreciate a nice, long email 🙂
I do too! I love getting a long newsy message.
I am Mensa-level good at music trivia. I smoked. (By the way, that picture of you is badass) I wore Vanilla Fields perfume. I loved Sassy magazine. I wore a bandana top. Jesus, are we the same person?? This made me so happy. ❤️
I loved my birthday card so much. It arrived on the day my dad passed. You couldn’t have performed that trick if you wanted. Love you, my spirit animal
Oh, that is perfect timing, I’m so glad. Love you.
We might be the same person!!! I think we might!
I swear, how were we in different countries, living the same life in our youth? Oh, the oxymoronic tendencies of youth! I smoked and did Step Aerobics too. Sometimes, usually at concerts, I would smoke cloves too. I loved they way smelled, but man did they ever hurt my lungs. And Buff Puffs. Yes. How about those electric curlers which where bendable sticks covered in a silicone-like coating that you wrapped your hair around and then twisted to hold them in place?
I honestly think we did live the same life! I didn’t have those curlers, but I had hot rollers, and boy, did I ever use them to achieve my giant hair goals.