As someone who came of age in the decade, I have plenty of firsthand experience in many things ’90s. For one thing, if you sought stress relief through pictures of cute kittens or babies, you couldn’t just hop on “the ‘gram” to get your fix. You had to, like, find a real life cat with some kittens, or call someone you knew with a cute baby, because seeing them in person was your ONLY option.
Now, though, you can see kittens whenever and wherever you want! IT’S CRAZY.
No text messaging also made rapid-fire text flirting and witty banter difficult. If you wanted to send a coy note to someone you had a crush on, you couldn’t just whip out your phone and send a text. You had to write it on a piece of paper, then covertly stick the paper in their locker and run away as fast as possible.
This is something I have mixed feelings about, because, on the one hand, if texting had been a thing back then, I feel that my flirty text messaging game would have been on point. Yeah, I would’ve killed it. But I also wouldn’t have my current collection of old letters, and there’s something charming about personal notes that you can physically hold in your hand.
What are some other things that were tougher in the ’90s? Well…stalking your ex was a lot harder than it is now, although it was still completely doable, HAHA! Yeah, my friends and I know this for a fact. In one incident, I spent 20 minutes hiding behind some crooked palm trees at the pool (long story).
Let’s just say that there were more hoops to jump through, whereas nowadays all you gotta do is press a few buttons to bring up Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
Kids today! You don’t even know what we had to go through… 🙂
Also, if you wanted to know something — like a factoid about Mars, or how to do some task in regular life, like how to make a kick-@ss egg sandwich, how to cut a watermelon, or how to write a proper thank you note to someone who gifted you a glass fruit bowl — you couldn’t just type on your phone to get the answer. You had to go to this placed called “a library,” or go to your friend’s house to look it up in their encyclopedias (which were always at least two years out of date), or you had to actually call someone on the phone. Like, you had to take your finger, and use it to push mechanical buttons on the phone! Siri wasn’t around.
Oh, and speaking of phones! — you couldn’t just, like, call somebody while you were walking to microbiology class at 10:15 a.m. on a Tuesday. You had to wait for the bus (because Uber didn’t exist), take the bus home, then wait for your stupid-@ss roommate to get off the freakin’ phone so that you could make your call from the shared phone in the kitchen.
They were rough times, my friend. Rough times. 🙂
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
I like that I went through my teens when cell phones weren’t ever-present. I think there’s so much pressure on kids now to look cool and perfect on social media. I didn’t enjoy having to share a “landline” with my parents though!
OMG, you brought back so many memories! I still remember the stack of encyclopedias we had…I have no idea when/how we got rid of all those books!! That was the internet for me back then…ha!
http://www.designbysydnee.com
Ooh the ’90’s! I remember my second major heartbreak in the beginning, my first job loss after 12 years of working at my job and “The Clinton” years. I also met Bruce in ’92 and we celebrated 25 years together (20 of them in marital bliss). I also started my love affair with Bobbi Brown makeup in ’95. It is a long story for another time. Sadly, that relationship has pretty much ended in the last few years.
Be well!
Oh, this made me smile. Am I crazy or do you look like your brother (at a quick glance) in the band photo? Also, your Senior pic? You look like you’re 12 years old. So cute!!! 🙂
As you know, I’m a few years older than you and from the sticks so my friend still had a party line on the phone at her house when we teens. And there was nothing for the old ladies to do but gossip on the phone. It would take forever to get an “open line”, but you could also stealthily pick up and listen to their conversations. We didn’t, because we had more important things to do. HAHA!
I will say that I, and every parent I know, want to smash our kids’ cell phones to a pulp 90% of the time. There’s also a lack of judgement (and immediate consequence) that makes social media and texting dangerous for kids. I am very glad we didn’t have that. I can’t imagine the dumb things we would have said and posted. Sigh.
Haha, yeah, my brother and I look similar at some angles and with some expressions. I joke with him that I’m his drag queen version, haha!
Oh, that’s funny. One of the boys looks just like I did when I was a kid (except my hair was often even shorter). We’d show him old pics and be like “do you know who this is?” and he’d sigh “yes… you”. “And do you know who people THINK it is?”. Sigh, “yes… me”. Poor honey. But he’s much more handsome. 🙂
OK, do you remember who’s idea it was to get that short haircut? Because I had terrible short haircuts when I was a kid and they were never my idea!
Oh god, as a child of the nineties (I was born in 1994) I can relate to some of them, but yes world became so different.
It’s funny because of how fast technology advances I have so many different experiences that Alisson who is 9 years younger doesn’t. For example, she asked me what a diskette was and when I explained her, she could believe of little information it could save; also she doesn’t understand what is like to only have internet with the phone so no one could use it.
I know I’m a child of the internet era, but even then I feel the 2000’s were hard in some stuff.
Digital cameras were starting to be a thing when I was in high school (I got one for Christmas my senior year of high school), and one kid had an iPod. And I used Livejournal, so kind of the forerunner to today’s social media. I think my old emo-y terrible posts are gone at least.
LOL! I remember collecting quarters for the payphone, because I want to call my crush. Well, actually our girl gang kinda call each other’s crush because we don’t want to get identified (now looking back, I think WTF? How will he know it’s me? ?).
Also really not keen on waiting for someone for hours and didn’t even know if they are going to come or not. Then again, the concept of time were a bit more vague back then, and I get to read more books :).
You could do legit crank calls with those old rotary dial phones (soooper old school). I went through a phase when I was, like, seven. Last week, I stumbled across letters from 1992, and they drew me so completely in… totally, completely. The range of emotions you feel holding a letter, looking at the unique handwriting, the postmark from West Africa or Germany or Iowa, knowing it physically traveled from a far-off place, seeing the smudges on it where someone put their cup of coffee or the cat walked across it or the rain came in the window – and knowing it’s 110% private. It’s like a whisper in your ear, a conversation in a bistro. That’s an experience I’m ready for again.
You look adorable in your senior pic! Nice layered waves!
I had a cell phone, the kind in the big bag, lol. And then we got the flip phones that you could text on, but you had to spell the words out with the keypad. Punch the 7 key four times for an S- you had to WANT to send that text! 🙂
And of course, we were all terrified of Y2K.
I miss really learning how to unplug. And how I felt secure without a phone. People would look at your face and not at their phones. People would actually have to make an effort to reach out to you to hear your voice, not just talk via text. The tech industry is my bread and butter, but sometimes I feel like its taken over my life.
I pretty much got away with murder in the 90’s. So glad social media was nothing more than sci-fi talk in the 90’s. Those were the days. Around this time (right before my birthday) I reminisce intensely of moments that happened while I was in my prime, mid-late 90’s. I don’t regret anything. It was wild and a blast. I wouldn’t change anything because I wouldn’t have the awesome family I have now!
Was it rough? I don’t remember thinking it was rough at the time.
Actually, I’m glad I grew up in a time when cell phones and social media weren’t keeping kids in a constantly distracted state. I would spend time with my friends and we would talk for hours. It was intense, it was deep, we were sharing our intimate feelings, we felt so strongly connected. I can’t really imagine having such a strong bond with people in the here and now with everyone having their phone on the table buzzing all the time. No pressure to look perfect on Instagram and to answer texts within 10 seconds.
And then we also had to master the art of patience, and plan our schedules ahead. We would arrange a meeting time and place and we had to stick to it. If someone was late, we just had to wait. I remember my high-school boyfriend waiting for me for 2 hours on a busy square one evening, I had been admitted to the ER and had not way to contact him. Those were different days for sure, but I think without the technology, we might have been more free!
LOL, that was a joke… Yeah, it was rough in some ways for instant communication and information gathering, but so blissful in others. I feel lucky to have grown up during that time.
I grew up in the late 90’s and remember how difficult it was to do homework and write essays when I was in junior high. I don’t know how I even managed to pull the info up as it’s not like I could walk to the library seeing how I lived on the city limits.
Oh and to talk to the few friends I had, it was difficult as I’d have to wait for the phone and my parents would occasionally ask me to get off it as I’d talked for too long or they needed to use it. I’m so grateful for internet and databases!