Monday
Jan052009
Prepare to be shocked, youngsters.
January 5, 2009Here’s how old I am:
I remember when Banana Republic sold nothing but faux-safari clothing.
In college, my boyfriend was a computer science major, and I witnessed a rudimentary form of instant messaging between him and another student, someone not even in the room. I thought it was some kind of black magic.
I grew up believing that Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde were skirt-chasing bachelors.
My first job out of college? I used a manual typewriter. Which may be why I quit after one and a half days.
The television I had growing up was made out of rock, and it was powered by a pterosaur.
Your turn.
Reader Comments (254)
- Our first microwave had no buttons or digital display; just a timer dial that you would turn to the appropriate (you hoped) time setting. (Nothing ever, ever, ever was heated up deeper than 1/4 of an inch below the surface.)
- I bought my first personal computer in 1994: a Macintosh Performa 475 with a 150MB hard drive. (No, not 150 megs of RAM, children; 150 megs of total storage space ... most of which was eaten up by Applications and System Software. No worries, though, because you could just store any excess data on a 1MB 3.5" floppy disc.)
- Our first family computer was a Texas Instruments keyboard that hooked up to the television set and, as far as I recall, allowed you to do nothing more than type white words on the blue background, purely for the joy and amazement of typing words on your television screen.
- Wii? Wii??? We had Atari: Asteroids, Space Invaders, and last, but definitely not least ... Tank. (I loved the level that allowed you to manually curve the 10-pixel-square "canonball" around corners.)
God, I'll be thinking up more stuff like that for days now.
...when People Magazine was the ONLY source for celebrity news and photos.
...losing my combination cassette tape/radio for a day was the worst punishment imaginable.
.....wanting to be one of the Solid Gold Dancers when I grew up. Or maybe one of the 20-Minute Workout girls, if the Solid Gold thing didn't pan out for me.
When I was a kid, if someone wasn't home when you called, you had to call them back later.
And you could only get money out of the bank when the bank was open.
(I swear to god I'm only forty.)
TVs had "tubes" and radios had "transistors." Dad could fix them both!
At school it was a Real Treat when we got to watch a "filmstrip" in class.
Our Thermos® bottles had glass liners - better check your milk before drinking if you had dropped that baby.
Platform shoes... Bell bottoms... Gaucho pants... Good God!
Every year, Beloit College in Wisconsin publishes a list of facts about their incoming freshman class, as a way for professors to understand the world the students grew up in and therefore relate to them. http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2012.php
My Saturday mornings were spent with shows like "The Smurfs" but also "The Gummi Bears." I also enjoyed "Small Wonder" and the ridiculously short-lived "Swan's Crossing." And I still think of Melissa Joan Hart as that girl from "Clarissa Explains It All"!
I remember when MTV went on the air for the first time.
Gas was $.79/gallon and cigarettes were $.85/pack.
There was a smoking section at my high school, and if you were 16 and had your parent's permission, you could smoke. AT SCHOOL.
Prairie skirts were the height of fashion. Especially if they were made by Gunne Sax.
Those were the days...
in junior high school I took a typing class and used an electric typewriter. Only half the kids in that class got to use the electrics though because they were too expensive to stock 30 of them at the school.
we were one of the first families on the street to get a microwave. It cost nearly a thousand dollars and the only thing we ever used it for was to melt cheese on tortillas.
my dad went out one night for a bag of potato chips and came back with this new invention called a VCR. He used his dad's inheritance to buy it.
a few months later, he spent the other half of the inheritance to purchase our very first home computer, a TRS-80 from Radio Shack. The TRS-80 computer is now on display in the Smithsonian institute.
2. I shopped at Koala Blue.
3. I cried when Simon LeBon got married.
4. I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in a movie theater with my friends. It was a PG movie. I felt so adult.
5. You were cool if you wore a Swatch watch, a Champion sweatshirt (inside out), leggings, floppy socks and Saico high tops.
There are more, but that will do for now.
My parents were the worst fuddy duddies ever. They would insist that everyone wear seat belts in their cars, and children were not allowed in the same room as someone smoking.
They didn't smoke, but we had ashtrays and their friends commonly smoked in our house. Can you imagine? Someone lighting up in YOUR house, where you don't smoke and where your children live?
I'm so old I too, remember how odd Banana Republic was in those days.
I'm so old I remember really wanting rainbow suspenders a la Mork.
I'm so old I grew up with a black and white tv until I was in grade school (one remembers the upgrade) and then, when in high school (and still) we were the only ones with just one tv.
Finally, I didn't really use email until my senior year of college. And it was only PINE based. I hated it until interfaces changed and AOL became in vogue. Lordy, those were the days of not killing time online.
You could "feed a family of 4 for $5" at McDonalds.
I think milk in my elementary school was something like 7 cents.
My parents paid $89 for The Dark Crystal on VHS for my brother's birthday.
Dr. Scholl's were my favorite shoes. Second favorite: Corkies.
I filled out my college application on paper! And mailed it in! With a stamp!