Saturday, 11 May 2024
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
Spun off from the “do you remember?” discussions on the August random threads.
Here’s how the instigator, Cat’s Eye, describes it:
Relating our own experiences of “I remember I was” for 9/11, Michael Jackson’s death, Katrina? How it was for us when the Internet and iPods first started happening? Sort of pooling our remembered history?
Date: August 23, 2010
Categories: Life, The Universe
First post?
Honestly, since Pokemon, everything’s been a blur. I was one year old when pokemon came out. I don’t remember 9/11. I’ve seen pictures, and been to where the Twin Towers stood. Michael Jackson’s death…I didn’t like him that much so I don’t care really. And of course I remember Hurricane Katrina. Who wouldn’t, with all the publicity it got?
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((Concerning the title: How about “Cultural Memories” or “Milestone Memories” or something more specific than just “memories” which could refer to anything? Or simply “Do you remember…?” No points for catchiness but more informative. The subject also makes me think of the song “As Times Goes By” albeit in an inside out kind of way.))
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Feel free to edit the title any way you like. I’m not attached to it.
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((I like “Do you remember…?))
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If we Administrators played this game, you’d think we were Ents. But you probably already do, so why not?
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Wicked cool!
You mentioned you saw Neil Armstrong’s first steps live, too. What about that? The Apollo 8 Christmas broadcast? Apollo 1?
Were the first photos of Mars from Mariner a big deal in the media? I know Viking made the cover of the NY Times.
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KaiYves: I don’t know how they affected other people, but all the things you mentioned made headlines and made a big impression on me. I was almost as obsessed with space as you are — followed all the probes, knew the names of all the astronauts. The Apollo 1 fire broke my heart.
I was sure that when I grew up I’d live in a dome on the moon, or at the bottom of the ocean, or possibly on Mars. (Science-fiction artists were into domes in those days.) Things didn’t work out that way, but I did manage to be working for NASA at Goddard Space Flight Center when the Voyager probes sent their beautiful images back from Jupiter. It was an exciting time to be there. NASA hung monitors in the halls for all to see, and the images filled them pixel by pixel, one line after another. It took hours for each new picture to appear. Those of us working on other projects had a hard time thinking about anything else.
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Beatles: We were living in Alexandria when the Beatles came to the U.S., so I was very aware of their existence. I’m sure we watched them on Ed Sullivan. But most of what I knew about them and their songs came from watching the cartoon show that started not long thereafter.
Space flights: The problem is that now, with the exception of the moon landing, I find it difficult to separate what I remember of the original flights and what’s been repeated through television and movies since then. For some reason the recoveries of the capsules are what I recall most clearly from the live events, maybe because of the Navy connection. I DO remember when the Air & Space Museum was housed in a little quonset hut. I can even picture the layout in my mind.
JFK: Again, living in Alexandria, I was very aware of the Kennedy presidency, especially because his children’s ages matched up with mine and my youngest brother’s. I heard about the assassination while walking home from school. I don’t remember any adults’ reactions. I do remember we turned on the television after church that Sunday just moments before Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald.
We watched JFK’s funeral, of course. Then General MacArthur’s. I thought state funerals were an annual event. (I recall Eisenhower’s funeral but not his time in office.)
RFK’s assassination; Martin Luther King’s; the Kent State shootings. When King died my mother said, “I hope a white man didn’t shoot him.” At the time, I had no idea what she meant by that. But I’ve often wondered about the longterm affect of all those assassinations on the psyches of my peers. The message seemed to be that taking a public stand was dangerous.
And always in the background: the war the war the war. I was terrified my brothers would have to serve one day. I promised myself that if they were ever sent to Vietnam, I would find some way to go over, too, so if anything happened to them, I would be nearby. Fortunately, the war ended well before that became an issue. I think I cried that day.
Later I found out that one of my brothers had decided he would have been a Conscientious Objector. Naturally, we never talked about any of this while the war was going on. We were a military family. We kept our heresies to ourselves.
On a cheerier note, my first camera was an Instamatic. But I can still imagine the smell of Polaroid developer fluid. And freshly mimeographed paper.
Heard my first sonic boom and experienced my first hurricane (Donna) while living in Norfolk, Virginia at the dawn of the 1960s. While living in Newport, Rhode Island, we lost power in the New York blackout of 1965.
Although we were early adopters for a lot of gadgets, we didn’t get around to owning a color television set until Christmas 1969.
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-I was very young during 9/11. It was a normal day for me, mostly. I don’t think I even learned of it until afterward. At the time, our family didn’t have cable, so not even my mother knew about it until her friend called her. I remember we had this little battery-powered black and white television with antennae on top that we hooked up afterward. I was eating breakfast and trying to find something to watch, but every channel was replaying the plane hitting the tower.
– I was at my friends house when Michael Jackson died. We were outside on the deck and the my friend’s neighbor/family friend called out to us that Michael Jackson was dead. We didn’t believe her. It just seemed like he was going to live much longer. After awhile of talking we turned on the television and surely enough there it was. I knew it was going to be a big deal.
– About Katrina/Natural disasters, I never seem to remember where I am when I first learn of them. The reason is because with natural disasters I get the information over time, so it feels more like a period of my life rather one instant.
Maybe if somebody else brings up something else I’ll be able to remember.
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– 3 Wow.
I remember when:
– Pokemon Johto (Gold/Silver/Crystal) came out
– Gameboy Advance SP came out
– Pokemon Fire Red/Leaf Green came out
– Pokemon Hoenn (Ruby/Saphire/Emerald) came out
– DS (and followers such as DS Lite) came out
– Pokemon Sinnoh came out (Dimond/Pearl/Platinum) came out
– The Flamboyant Cuttlefish was discovered poisonous
– Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver came out
-The past two presidential elections that I’m too lazy to put in order.
(The reason I started with Johto is because until just a bit before it’s realease, Pokemon was all the rage at my elementary school, which put me off of it.)
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I remember when the DS Lite came out. I know because I’d bought a regular DS a few days before and was steamed that I hadn’t waited to get a cool DS Lite.
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Michael Jackson’s death- Didn’t sink in at first. I was at sleep away camp at the time (a music camp, funnily enough, and also where I met Nym and Keiffer. Yay stories!), with no computers or handheld devices that gave access to the internet. One of the counselors had brought an iPod or iPhone or something, and found out from that. They told everybody, and at first I wasn’t sure if it was true. I was rather disconnected from the world at that time.
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I remember that too. You compared it to if Terry Pratchett had died.
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I suppose I should let Anomylous tell our Michel Jackson’s death story, as it really belongs to her. I’ll ask her to do so.
I don’t remember 9/11. Which is annoying. I remember a couple things from when I was about two, but not that. Despite the fact that I was… Five. Can’t my earliest memory at least be something historically important? No, because it’s my sister’s dance recital. *sigh*
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We were on vacation, and me and Errata and a couple of cousins were sitting in the car together. Someone asked the question, “Who would you want to get eaten by zombies?” (don’t ask me why…). I thought it would be both ironic and doing the world a service if it was Michael Jackson, so I said so.
Well, later that day we found out that Michael Jackson had died. So we started joking about how I’d death-wished him. Well, maybe I did, but I promise I didn’t mean to 
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Did you hear about how I did that to Walter Cronkite, Robert McCall, but NOT Sean O’Keefe on the first random thread this month?
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9/11: I remember this, but not in clear, vibrant detail. My sis and I, and maybe Mom, I don’t remember, had gotten up like any other school day (home school, mind you). It was probably around 8 in the morning, my sis and I were at the table making breakfast–I remember the milk ended up getting left out on the table for awhile longer than it should have. I think maybe Dad called, and told us what had ahppened, and to turn on the news, and that his work was letting all the employees off to go be home with their families, and to be safe (I think there was concern that the Twin Towers might not be isolated, and that other places would get hit by terrorist attacks, not that htey were all that important a place to hit, though, mind you.). And then I remember we watched the news most of the day, until mom and dad finally herded us back to our studies….But that’s pretty much it.
Michael Jackson: Never liked him much, so the only thing I remember about his death was being fed up with the fact that all the shows I wanted to watch were being monopolized with news stories about his death, and the radio was all abuzz with it, and it was just annoying as could be.
I do remember when Michael Jackson was on trial for child molestation, however. I remember we were driving into Anchorage, and there was a live or semi-live news thingy that announced the verdict. If I recall correctly, mom was rather disgusted at the “not guilty” verdict.
IN other “I remember news”:
– I remember when internet was not common place in households, and when not all computers came with it (our first computer, when I was itty bitty, didn’t ahve internet)
– I remember when digital cameras didn’t exist
– I remember when DVDs did not exist, and movies were watched on VHS, and you had ot “Be Kind, Please Rewind”
– I remember when CDs didnt’ exist, and we just had cassette tapes
– I remember real Walkmans (cassette kind)
– I remember when CD-ROMs weren’t around or at least not common place, and computers used floppy disks for games and storage and the like. My sis had Oregon Trail on floppy
– I remember when you didn’t have to be a ticketed passenger to go through security and the airport
– I remember NeoPets (god, I wanted one of those so bad when I was little)
– I remember Furbies
– I remember the real Polly Pockets, about 1/2 inch to an inch high hard plastic people, in pocket sized containers, that opened to reveal various things (castles, water park, etc), NOT the fake so-called Barbie-esque things marketed as Polly Pockets today.
– I remember when there were 9 planets, none of this “Pluto isn’t a planet” nonsense, no sirree.
– I remember the scandal with Clinton and Monica Lewinsky
– I remember (albeit somewhat vaguely) when Schwarzenegger got elected Governor of CA. Holy cake, that was only 7 years ago???????
Um, can’t thinko f anything else right off.
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I also remember Furbies. I had like 5 of them, and they would NOT turn off, until you stuffed them into the back of a closet or someplace dark. They were just so annoying.
I had a NeoPet also, but my mom didn’t like the game and almost never let me on the computer, so it pretty much died.
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I never actually had a Furby, and I forget if I actually wanted one or not…
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You probably didn’t, seeing as they were so annoying and there was no way to turn them off. I honestly don’t know why I had so many.
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Yes, but I remember when i was little desperately wanting one of those talking Barneys (my sis and I both just had to have one, couldn’t possibly share), and getting one for Christmas. And they never shut up. If you accidentally pressed one of them, it would just start talking and talking and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!
So I’m not sure I was very logical on the concept of not wanting something due to it’s annoyingness and inability to be shut off. :/
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For some reason I really liked Polly Pockets. I liked dressing them up, but not barbies.
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I remember furbies! I also remember when VHS, floppy disks, and digital cameras were very new/not very popular. We had a little machine that rewinded VHS’s… Oh, when Pluto was being disputed (that wasn’t very long ago). My mom use to use cassette tapes a lot. Our cars both still have cassette players, and when I go in new cars it’s gone and I’m all sad for all the forgotten 8-tracks. I attempted to have a neopet (online, that is). The thing is, no matter how starving it is, it never dies. It’s data is probably still on the website.
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Oh geez, furbies. I had one. Its name was Bo. I desperately wanted one and my parents refused to buy one for me, so I took advantage of shopping with my grandparents to get them to buy one for me. My dad was really annoyed. I understand why, now–that thing was pretty obnoxious.
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“ME HUNGRY, AH? AH? YUMMMMM. AH? AH? YUMMMMM. AH? AH? YUMMMMM. OKAY, ME DONE.”
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Hahaha, yup that pretty much sums it up.
Do you remember that weird Furby language they spoke? I swear when my Furbys talked to each other they were plotting world destruction.
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I do remember it. The furbies came with a little Furbish dictionary that I promptly lost. However, thanks to a quick Google search…
Ay-ay! Dah doo-ay! Kah may-may wee-tee! May-may may-lah! May-may may-tah! Mee-mee mee-mee noo-loo! E-day! Wah!*”
*Translation: Look! Big fun! Me love sing! Love hug! Love kiss! Very very happy! Good! Yipeee!!” (Okay, so the vocabulary was pretty limited.)
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I remember reading somewhere that CIA employees weren’t allowed to have Furbies because of their habit of repeating things people said.
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I think I read that, too. It might have been on Wiki.
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A little machine that rewound VHS’s? You mean, like something other than just the VCR? *is confused*
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Some people had separate machines to rewind VHS’s faster or something. My grandparents had one. My immediate family just use[s/d] the VCR.
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FURBIES!
My aunt got me the limited edition Easter one. I still have it, but I left the batteries in it for too long and everything got corroded, so it doesn’t work.
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I remember all those things too.
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My camp counselor had this huge fear of Furbies. She went into the corner, curled up into a ball, and twitched whenever someone mentioned them.
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I remember most of that, though not really Walkmans, and I was probably too young for Clinton.
When I was in second grade or so, I remember my class being in the computer lab and being in an uproar because we’d heard somewhere that they’d discovered a 10th planet, “Planet X”.
And I would rather like to dispute the suggestion that Neopets are something to be remembered, considering that I happen to be logged onto there right now.
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Oh, I also remember the days before Game Boy Color, back when it was just Game Boy Original.
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About DVDs- I was a bit peeved when I watched my first DVD at a birthday party. It was “The Sound of Music” and I was annoyed that it didn’t automatically play. I didn’t know it was a DVD; I thought it was some kind of fancy VHS tape… 
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I can remember both of the elections for George W. Bush, both the race against John Kerry and the race against Al Gore. My parents were avid Republican supporters of Bush, so my brother and I heard a lot about it.
I remember when Rollerblades were a popular mode of transportation.
I remember having a case full of cassette tapes, and I would listen to them all the time.
I remember being an avid watcher of many children’s shows, some of which are now extinct. These included Teletubbies, Barney, Krat’s Creatures, Zoboomafoo, Rolie Polie Olie, Bear in the Big Blue House, PB&J Otter, Sesame Street, and Clifford.
I remember Moon Shoes, and I desperately wanted a pair but my mom thought that I would fall and hurt myself, so I stayed wanting them.
I remember having both a Giga Pet and a Tamagotchi, and both provided endless hours of simple handheld entertainment.
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Re: Children’s shows:
I loved Teletubbies, Barney, Rolie Polie Olie, Bear in the Big Blue House, Sesame Street, and Clifford, when I was little. Now I wonder which of the shows I liked still exist. 
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You forgot Blue’s Clues!!!!!!! HOW COULD YOU FORGET STEVE!?!?!? *wails*
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OH!
I remember Blue’s Clues. I remember that show.
XD
One year, for Halloween, I was Magenta, my sister was Blue, and my dad was Steve. (All the parents never did figure out why all the kids “knew” his name, and called him Steve for a long time until he finally managed to explain that it was a character from a TV show. All the kids would go “Hey, Steve!” when we walked past, and it confused the parents so much. XD) It was fun. I still have pictures of that somewhere….
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My little sister and I did the Magenta/Blue costume theme one year too. I was about four. I had this awesome hat that my mom or a babysitter or someone made for me with these Blue ears sewn onto it. I still wore it occasionally until I was like six.
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Who’s Magenta?
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Another character on the Blue’s Clues show. A dog, similar to Blue, except, well, magenta.
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Back in my day we didn’t had no god-durn Majintaw. We had Blue and we was happy wit’ it.
((I’m not quite sure what accent that’s supposed to be, or why it’s present.))
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I don’t remember Magenta actually ever doing anything….. *ponders*
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Magenta got glasses in one episode, that’s about the extent of what I remember her story line being – and now they’ve gone and made this spin off show called Blue’s Room, which is basically when Blue goes into this room (surprise, surprise) and is a puppet and can talk. :/ Personally I like the “real” Blue’s Clues much better…
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A…. puppet?
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Blue is the dog at Steve’s House. She’s a puppet. Who can talk. </AVPMoverdose>
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There’s no such thing as an AVPM overdose! You silly, silly, child.
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Yup. Google Blue’s Room…
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Piggy, I’m only a year or two younger than you, and we had Magenta. She just wasn’t terribly memorable.
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I remember when Paprika was born!
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Zoboomafoo was fun. So was Blue’s Clues. I don’t know if they’re still showing Zoom, but I really hope so, it was a great show.
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Zoom was awesome! I remember looking at the kids and thinking how they looked so old and cool…
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I used to watch Sesame Street like two or three years ago, just for Journey to Ernie.
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Journey to Ernie? What? Why are the butchering Sesame Street with one character oriented interludes?????
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They’ve always done that.
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Really? Why do I not remember this….?
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You don’t remember Elmo’s World? Or the Count’s castle?
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Elmo’s World did not exist when I watched Sesame Street as a child. It is a recent (or semi-recent) addition that I despise not only on principle, but due to its extremely annoying nature.
I remember trips being made to the Count’s Castle on occasion, as well as to Bert and Ernie’s, but they were short, unintrusive, rather fun, and I’m not convinced they occurred every episode.
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Oh boy, Elmo’s World. I can still remember the theme song:
La la la la, la la la la, Elmo’s World
La la la la, la la la la, Elmo’s World
Elmo loves his goldfish, his crayons too
That’s Elmo’s World!
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Actaully, I remember it appearing quite recently, after I stopped watching it regularly.
*Goes on wikipedia* Apparently the format of Journey to Ernie changed in 2003. I think that’s when I started noticing it, because I don’t remember any Journey to Ernie before that.
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You think that’s butchering sesame Street? Have you seen what Disney’s done to it? *retches*
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I’ve not watched Sesame Street for a fair bit of time.
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Have they changes the Cookie Monster back to how he’s supposed to be?
If not, Sesame Street does not exist, in my mind.
-A
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Worse. They’ve added some awful awful “fairy school” where the students are all froufrou and have to chase away the dustbunnies from under the carpet before their teacher can turn back into a fairy.
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Ugh. I watched one new episode of Sesame Street and actually turned off the TV at that part, it was so bad.
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Sesame Street? What happened to Sesame Street?
(C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me….)
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“It’s me and you, and Zaboomafooooooooo!
Come on along and see what’s new…”
I used to watch that show all the time.
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I desperately wanted Moon Shoes when I was younger, but I never got them … how high can you jump in them?
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I suppose not many people here used AOL. Ah, 56k modems and busy telephone lines. I remember Gameboy Colors being new. And digital cameras, of course. DVDs. Michael Jackson’s death was only like a year ago, so I don’t feel that’s something to “remember” in the sense of this thread.
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The first news event I remember is the Bosnian conflict, I have very vague memories of broadcasts about it on TV, including one where there was snow on the ground there, and my mom pointed it out, because it was mid or late spring where we lived.
9/11, like I said on the random thread and probably some other thread before:
I was in 3rd grade.
Where we live, it’s far enough from the towers that we didn’t see or hear anything from school. All I knew is that some kids were called to the office to go home early. I didn’t think very much of it, because before I’d left for school that day, my mother had showed me that she’d finally bought me a magnetic chess set, something I’d begged her about for months, so I was counting the hours until I could go home and take it out of the box.
I went home at the regular time. We could see a cloud of smoke, but my mom didn’t tell me anything in the car. When we got home, dad was there, home early, and then they told me what had happened and turned on the TV in their room.
I can remember all of this very clearly, right down to the patterns on the cushions on my mom’s bed.
I didn’t feel like playing chess that afternoon.
Everything on my “Can You Remember” list, I personally remember, except Hale-Bobb, the iPod, and Princess Diana’s death.
I can remember wanting a Furby, a Robo-Chi pet, and a Razor scooter.
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I remember:
– All or most of the characters and plot of Rugrats, Teletubbies, Ed, Edd and Eddy, andCatDog. (Though this may have been because shows in the Philippines are delayed a few months or so after America.)
– A bit of Bananas in Pajamas and Aah! Real Monsters.
– The Berenstein (sp?) Bears!
– 9/11, very clearly (I was five).
– My first day of kindergarten.
I DO NOT remember:
– Columbine.
– Tamagotchi (what is that?).
– Anything before the Gameboy SP.
My first memory: Competition between:
– Going to the mall with my grandparents (I must have been about three or four). We would go to Festival Mall many weekends, and we would order ham and cheese pizza with Greenwich. And then I would go on the little kids’ train on the lowest floor.
– Going to Baguio as a kid. (Also 3 or 4.) This was a one-time deal. I wanted to sleep in the little cupboard under the TV with newspapers as blankets.
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Hey! Tamagotchi isn’t THAT old! My sister used to be obsessed with them, and my parents ended up throwing it away. There were a lot of tears that day…
I also remember the GBC. I actually remember seeing a somewhat old E.T. novelization when I was younger, and it had ads for GB and GBC E.T. games. I said, “Wow, these games are in color!”
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I remember watching a DVD for the first time. It was at a friend’s house, in kindergarten. I was very impressed how you could select different things with the remote. I remember when my brother got a Gameboy Advance SP and when he got a DS Lite. I remember my family unpacking our first computer, a giant white Gateway Cow-Cube computer. I remember having AOL, and having to ask permission to go online because it would tie up the phone line.
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I remember television for which you actually had to get up and change the channel manually–no remote control. And rabbit ear antennae. We didn’t get a TV with a remote until probably at least 2003, 2004? Because the TV my parents had had since before I was even born, I think, still worked, so no one saw any point in upgrading until it died. In fact, when it did die, for a good 2+ weeks, we reverted to my parents small, ancient black and white telly that I think they got as a wedding present. And then we finally bought a new TV….
Of course, that black and white TV, although it is still quite functional, is no longer usable what with the switch over to digital…
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That pretty much sounds like our history. My first remote came with the television I bought sometime in the 1990s. It’s still the only television I ever bought, though I did own a hand-me-down for the last year or two I lived in Alexandria. It was the 1969 model mentioned previously. Oh, wait, I forgot that I did use a remote with that — the one that came with the cable box. I subscribed only because my favorite shows were on PBS, and the UHF channels no longer worked on the old TV.
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Another significant landmark from my Muser-age years: the passage of Title IX. “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
My first year of track, the girls’ team had one single city-wide meet on the schedule and no uniforms, just our regular gym clothes. After Title IX passed, suddenly we had a full schedule and uniforms. Hard to believe it took until the 1970s to make those gains.
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9/11- We were on our way to Disneyland. I was four.
MJ- I was at Disneyland with our church youth group, and the leader was looking at her BlackBerry. She suddenly looked up and yelled, “MICHAEL JACKSON DIED!”
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I remember the morning of 9/11 quite clearly… I was in first grade (for some reason I think it was second, but by my math it was first) and I was going down to the lunch room to give the lunch lady the slip that said what everybody wanted for lunch. On my way, I saw a boy in my grade walking down the hallway with his mom, and I overheard something about a plane crashing. Fifteen minutes or so later, my mom picked me and my brother up from school and explained what happened. At the time, I was just happy that I was getting a day off from school. She was afraid that something might happen, especially since we live relatively close to the city. Once we got home, we were upset because all of the channels were taken up by news. (We didn’t have cable at the time.) I really didn’t understand the gravity of the events until I was older, and I see how it has affected me. I’m very wary about flying on planes, and also of low flying planes when I’m on the ground. It’s always sorta in the back of my mind.
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I have a few questions for those old people:
1. What’s a Furby?
2. What’s a Tamagotchi?
3. What’s a Giga Pet?
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Furbies were essentially fuzzy gremlin looking toys that were supposed to be able to “learn” the longer you played with them. There was a big wave of toys like that at the time, robotic cats and dogs that were supposed to have characteristics of real pets (I think one was called Meowchi)
Anyway everyone I’ve ever asked has had horror stories about their furby. I think i got bored of mine or it just broke, but my brother’s made a high pitched noise for days despite being seemingly turned off (i don’t remember though because i was about six)
They also would speak gibberish…they are seriously FREAKY looking so they’re just generally creepy.
tamagotchi is a little handheld pet that you can raise. kinda hard to explain…basically the toy was a plastic egg looking thing on a keychain. tamago means egg in japanese and it’s combined with the word watch to create “tamagotchi”…lol learned that in japanese last year! wiki tells me it’s romanized without the i at the end in japan so that makes more sense…anyway. i remember my brother telling me to feed his every day while he was at school and i think i must have been in kindergarten! holy crap that was a long time ago…..
giga pets were basically the same as tamagotchis.
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oh god furbies were terrifying. i never had one
tamagotchi were sort of like a portable neopet, if that helps
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Come to think of it, I think it was gigapets and not neopets that I was thinking of earlier, but they’re essentially the same (as are digimonsters, actually got one of those as a present from a relative)….
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Just curious: did/does anyone have Petz (Catz and/or Dogz)?
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Nope.
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YES! I had the computer game with both Catz and Dogz. My brother used to mess with me by painting all of my Petz pink and growing a bunch of carrots all over my backyard.
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Ooh, I had Catz! That game was so much fun! (Well, now it would probably be really stupid, but it was fun when I was seven.)
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Oh, no, it’s way too cute to be stupid. And the screensaver is the best, except sometimes I have forgotten to mute the sound at work, leading to strange interruptions while I’m giving the orientation spiel to visitors.
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In that case, I need to try to figure out if I can make the Windows 97 version we had work on my Windows XP computer. 
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I know that Catz 5 works with XP. Haven’t tried it with Windows 7 yet.
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No, but I did (and do) have a program called Neko On Desktop. These cute little pixelated cats follow your mouse around and you can feed them and such. The cool part is customizing them. I had a hot pink and lime green cat once…
There’s also web nekos, they’re a script or something that you can put on web pages. Come to think of it, it would be really cool to have one on MuseBlog… *hint hint* P*ease?
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I wanted a tamagotchi so BAD! And I don’t even know why.
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Oh wow. That sounds… incredibly annoying. Were Furbies those creepy penguin-like toys? Because if so I think I know what you’re talking about, but I never had one.
Apparently PokeWalkers are like Tamagotchi? I have no idea.
I had one of those robotic pets. It was a dog, and it never shut up.
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yeah just like that! i have no idea why they were popular at all, they’re not cute…
i always wanted a robodog but my mom never let me (haha that’s such a great sentence…how crazy)
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The Robo-Chi pets? I think the dog was Poo-Chi? I had one, too, and it was rather annoying. It was gold-colored, and I named it Jessie.
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Mine was green. I don’t think I named it, but it was super annoying too.
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I remember Furbys and Tamagotchis, at least vaguely (I never had one). 9/11 was very vivd for me, because I went in one of the twin towers about two weeks before it and it freaked me out that someone could blow up those nice towers I visited, especially since I might have been there if I hadn’t had to return to austria to go to school. Michael Jacksons death didn’t impress me much, because by the time I heard about him the focus was on him being pedophile.
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I remember:
-Tamagotchis, I had one of the first models (from Japan. I mean an original Tamagotchi, not one of the American ones.) before any of my peers had them. I remember the American Tamagotchis came out about three years after I had already gotten three different types of Tamagotchis (Tama Light, Tama Dark, and Tama School.) and got one of the v.4s eventually so that I could connect to my other friend’s Tamagotchis, because the Japanese ones and American ones sadly don’t connect.
-9/11. I remember coming home from school and the tv was on, which shocked me, and my mom told my sister and I what was happening, and everyone at school was kind of quiet for the next couple of days after that.
-The original Polly Pockets, the tiny ones. My parents never let me get them, but I remember seeing them and thinking that they looked a lot cooler than the newer, larger ones.
-Michael Jackson’s death, I remember, because that was the last day of piano camp, and on the first day there had been a really bad train crash in Washington DC I think, so we were all kind of freaking out and all my classmates were saying that they were going to mess up their recitals because Michael Jackson died, which I didn’t really care about. But it was kind of weird how on the first and last days of camp, something bad happened.
-Rabbit ear antennae: We still have those, I think. *looks it up* Yup. We’ve got a huge flat-screen TV in our living room, hooked up to a rabbit ear antennae. Sometimes my dad has to get up and hold it up to the wall to get a signal. XD
-I remember when a lot of computers didn’t have internet. I didn’t have a computer with internet, I just used my dad’s, until I was about eleven, I think.
-TV shows. I remember watching Teletubbies, Dragon Tales, Rolie Polie Olie, Bear in the Big Blue House, Clifford, Barney, and probably more but those are the main ones that I remember. (Dragon tales, dragon tales, it’s almost time for dragon tales, come along and take my hand, let’s all go to dragon land… *singing*)
(I’ll probably add more to this later, but my brain’s dead. Went on a six-hour hike yesterday.)
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– TV shows: Dragon Tales and Clifford that fireh mentioned, I don’t remember from actual child hood, but from middle/high school, when my sis and I returned to the wonderful world of children’s television (we often switched it on when mom and dad weren’t home, and we were supposed to be doing school work). And of coruse Telletubbies, but I don’t know if it was on when I was young, I avoid that and Boomba like the plague. They care me. As a young adult, I had a fondness for Cyberchase (and thought the Sherry Spotter spoof was hilarious)
From my own childhood: Lamb Chops (I *loved* that show), Reading Rainbow (with that guy from Star Trek–what’s his name, Jamar, Jamal? *googles* Erm, LeVar, that’s it), Wishbone, Barney, Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, I also watched–but wasn’t all that fond of–Sesame Street (more my sister’s thing) and Bill Nye the Science Guy (I actually hated him, but my sister *loved* the show. I found him rather annoying).
We didn’t get cable, so really the only shows I ever got to watch were the PBS shows. We only saw cable TV when on vacation at my aunt and uncle’s, but I remember I liked Cartoon Network, and my sis liked Nickelodeon.
Shows I remember from CN and Nick: Tom and Jerry, something with some guy with a football shaped head called Arnold, I think, Blue’s Clues, Ed Edd and Eddie, ummmmm, Sailor Moon, I know there were others….Um, Cow and Chicken, but after Mom and Dad caught a bit of one we weren’t allowed to watch it anymore, which, really, didn’t bother us in the least–we didn’t like it all that much. Of course, being told we weren’t allowed to watch it, meant when the parents were outside, we’d switch to that channel for a bit of forbidden watching, despite the fact that neither of us liked it.
I also remember watching Bewitched on Nick at Night
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I remember Hey Arnold!, Blue’s Clues, Reading Rainbow, Mister Roger’s, Sesame Street, Cow and Chicken, Johnny Bravo, Tom and Jerry, Rocko’s Modern Life, Ed, Edd and Eddy, Zoom, Zabomafoo (god, I have no idea how to spell that), Arthur, and… others.
I always started crying when Barney came on, apparently. 
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Did anyone else used to watch Mr. Rogers?
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I LOVED THAT SHOW. How did I not put that on the list?
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I used to watch Mr. Rogers when I was a tween.
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Somehow or another I didn’t even know he existed until I saw the parodies on Saturday Night Live.
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He was only on UHF channels (National Educational Television, which later became PBS).
I hope the parodies were affectionate. Mr. Rogers was a good egg. If he had added hot-pink bunnies and a few lessons in world domination, his show would have been perfect.
By the way, Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop were on when I was a toddler. I was a big fan. I still have my Lamb Chop hand puppet.
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Wow. I used to watch old Lamb Chop videos as a toddler. I never did find out how old they were, but one of them taught me “The Song That Never Ends”.
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“When I grow up I want to be a Christmas tree… Doesn’t that make you sick?” Oh, gosh, I adored Lamb Chop! And Shari Lewis. What a wonderfully creative, sensible, perceptive woman Shari Lewis was. The original (and only genuine) Captain Kangaroo was a sweet, decent sort, too. With Mr. Green Jeans, Mr. Moose, the Magic Drawing Board, and…Mr. Bunny Rabbit. (Another bunny!)
Mr. Rogers came on the air about the time we moved to California. I’m not sure whether we had UHF then. Possibly not, since the television was from the 1950s. (Funny, I remember the inside of the TV better than the outside.) Anyway, somewhere during that time period I decided I had reached the age at which I should give up children’s shows, including Saturday morning cartoons. Though I didn’t do so right away, because I remember watching Astro Boy and Ultraman.
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Lamb Chops! I absolutely adored Lamb Chops as a child. I had a Lamb Chops t-shirt, a Lamb Chops puppet, my sis had a Charlie Horse puppet, and one time when I was little (I only vaguely remember this, unfortunately), Shari Lewis and Lamb Chops came to the Performing Arts Center in Anchorage, and I got to go. ’twas bril. Although I really just remember that it ahppened, not any details or anything.
This is the song that doesn’t end, it goes on and on my friends, some people started singing it not knowing what it does, and now they’ll keep on singing it forever just because, this is the song that doesn’t end, it goes on and on my friends, some people started singing it not knowing what it does, and now they’ll keep on singing it forever just because, this is the song that doesn’t end….
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Of course! I loved Mr. Rogers when I was a kid.
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I did!! I think I was… 7 or 8. Somewhere around there.
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Ohh hm. TV shows from my childhood. I wasn’t allowed to watch tv on weekdays so these are mostly weekend things…
– Reading Rainbow
– Wishbone
– Mr. Rogers
– Zoom (thinking back, it was a very muserly show)
– Little Bear
– Franklin (I think that’s what it was called? The one with the Turtle)
– Arthur (almost forgot that one!)
I didn’t like Sesame Street, or Bill Nye (I feel like I would’ve loved the show except he was creepy and annoying). I don’t remember watching Barney, but I remember when my sister watched it.
I also remember when Mr. Rogers died : /
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Ooh. Arthur and Franklin. Those were good.
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I don’t remember watching a show with Franklin, but I loved Franklin the turtle books. I remember one where he had a blankie he didn’t want to get rid of…
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Yep, that’s the one. Like Little Bear, there were books and a show.
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And the Bearenstein Bears. Loved those books as a kid, then when I was older (like, middle school to high school age), I discovered Bearenstein Bears on PBS….Fun times.
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I used to have a Franklin video game! Actually, I think I had 2.
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I remember the 35W bridge collapse–my neighbor called over and told us to turn the TV on. Then we couldn’t get in touch with my uncle, who we thought might have used the bridge that day. I thought it was terrorists, and I couldn’t believe that something terrible could have happened just because people didn’t bother to repair the bridge.
I remember being a decepticon–I cared so much about what other people thought about me. I also remember finding my current friends after some socially alienating experiences.
I remember watching Arthur and crying when Buster left.
I remember dial-up internet and being the last of my friends to get my own email address.
I remember the first day my friend told me to go on MuseBlog.
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35W was in like 2007, so you probably SHOULD remember that. But I remember it too; we were getting calls all day from relatives everywhere inquiring as to our status.
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Zoom. I think it should come back. Again. It was a good show for older kids.
I’ll probably have to wait twenty years.
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Ahhh I love(d) Zoom…for awhile it was my life dream to get on the show, and I think it was the first show I really followed – before that I wasn’t really that big into any one TV show, so Zoom was really the first.
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I remember 9/11. What stands out in my memory is how shocked Mom looked, and my own thoughts, which were along the lines of “It’s in New York, we’re in Texas, why do we care?” and “Hey, planes crashing into skyscrapers is pretty cool…”
I vaguely remember Columbine; it seemed like a sad thing but didn’t affect me that much.
I remember the Y2K scare, and being upset that New Year’s because Mom wouldn’t let me stay up until midnight, and it wasn’t like I’d have another chance to watch a new millenium arrive.
I had a Tamagotchi pet or some knockoff. It was a dog that I named Millicent. I played with it for maybe a week or two and then forgot about it. We also got a little robotic dog that we still have somewhere.
I remember when the state quarters started coming out. I thought it was the coolest thing, but never did manage to collect a full set.
I remember when the computer made this whole series of cool noises when it connected to the Internet, and images took forever to load. I remember in particular watching a picture of some American Girl dolls (on the company website) getting gradually less pixellated until finally it had reached full resolution.
I remember overalls. You don’t see them around that much anymore, but they used to be all over the place. Kind of a shame they went out of fashion since they’re practical garments – never slip down and usually have amply sized pockets.
I remember the original Shrek movie coming out, and the Lord of the Rings movies. (I didn’t see them at the time, but my dad and my uncles made a temporary Christmas tradition of going to see the latest one.)
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How does a person NOT remember overalls? People where I live wear them a lot, still. (Maybe that’s because I live in Redneck Country, now that I think of it. You still get the occasional farmer in overalls and a straw hat driving down the interstate in a tractor. XD)
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I used to have a pair of overalls that had stuff on them. I remember making my mom tell me a story with them over and over again. *sigh*
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When I was little I wore overalls ALL THE TIME. My favorite ones were khaki. I wore them to the first day of first grade!
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Oh, and how could I neglect to mention one of the major milestones of the 1970s: the first encounter with Monty Python, during its original U.S. run on PBS. The first sketch I remember seeing was the one about the exploding penguin on the telly. The show was nothing short of a revelation. It actually transformed the way members of my family communicated with each other.
I saw MP and the Holy Grail soon after it opened at the late and lamented Outer Circle, a small movie theater in DC that specialized in foreign and obscure movies. (Sometimes I was the sole person in the audience; not the case with the Holy Grail, of course.) Unfortunately, I didn’t get there in time to receive a free coconut.
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I remember backstreet boys and hanson. Hansen? I never listened to either of them, or watched TV shows. I wasn’t much for the pop culture.
I remember the whole scandal with Bill Clinton.
I remember 9-11. I was going into my first class, math, in 5th grade, and the TV was on, and they were showing an airplane flying into the building. Then when mom picked me up at the end of the day she was crying.
I remember the anthrax scare. The school counselor came in and talked to us about it but she didn’t actually tell us what she was talking about, so I was really confused because my parents hadn’t told me. And then she came over and was like “Are you all right? Are you all right?” and since she clearly expected me to not be all right I started crying.
I remember George Harrison’s death.
I remember Katrina and Rita. School closed because people were evacuating to where I live.
I remember when Mass legalized gay marriage.
I remember both Bush elections. The first one, I stayed up until 11 or midnight, way past my bedtime, watching as the results came in and hoping that Gore would win. I remember the whole fiasco with the votes.
I remember the Sydney olympics. I remember watching Apolo Anton Ohno skate at the Salt Lake City olympics.
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Anyone want to make a list of early-mid nineties events? The ones from the late nineties I remember because I was old enough to. Except Columbine. I don’t know why I don’t remember Columbine.
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How early?
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1993 and later. Stuff that would be a challenge for me to remember. 1993-7, maybe 8.
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So, for what I remember…
9/11 ~ I was five, and I don’t really remember anything clearly about it – I sort of remember it vaguely being on the news (We were living in Canada then, but it was still on a lot of the channels) but not really understanding what was going on. It wasn’t until later that someone fully explained what happened to me.
My parents got their first computer in 1993 or 1994, so before I was born. I remember playing Barbie Riding Club and some other fish game on it on CD-Roms.
When I was really little, I watched Barney, Sesame Street (Especially Elmo’s World – I was terrified of Cookie Monster), Dragon Tales, Bear in the Big Blue House, and Roly Poly Oli (spelling?) among others I’m probably forgetting…most of those were actually on VCRs we had, and like Luna, I remember the “Be Kind, Please Rewind” stickers we used to get inside the VCR tapes from the library. When I was a little older (Around 7/8 years old) I really loved Zoom as mentioned in an earlier post, Reading Rainbow, and Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman, which I admittedly still watch sometimes… I also remember Reading Rainbow coming on right after this show with lions reading, which sort of creeped me out but I usually caught the end of it before Reading Rainbow, and I usually caught the end of Cyberchase before Fetch. Funny how you remember what was on before your favorite shows…
I remember when Dora first became popular, because my cousins absolutely loved it when they were toddlers and that was when I first heard of the show. Since I have a 5 year old sister, it’s sort of funny to see what’s popular as opposed to when I was her age…for example, Dora and Diego (which she loves), Caillou, Ni Hao Kai Lan, and Olivia. I never watched any of those shows, although she does like Elmo’s World.
As far as toys go, I’ve never heard of Ferbies but did have Tamagotchis, which were probably the first electronic game I really loved. I remember that my sister had one and we used to “connect” them so that the Tamogotchis could go over to each other’s houses and play with one another. I remember that when a new Tamogotchi was born, you had to wait forever for it to load because the egg would bounce up and down until it cracked. It was only supposed to take five minutes, but mine often took days…and then something must have gone wrong with the battery because it started to beep annoyingly until I couldn’t stand it, so I threw it underneath my sock and underwear drawer…it might still be in there, actually. :/
I had quite a few Barbies, which I liked to dress up…and one Polly Pocket, which wasn’t Barbie size but wasn’t the mini ones, either. It was rubbery and had a few clothes you could dress it up in, although I never really got into it.
I loved American Girl though, “collecting” (never really played with them) a few of the dolls throughout several birthdays and Christmases. I know they’re still around because my sister still gets the mag, and I liked the website for quite awhile.
That’s all the things I can think of right now, but more may come to me.
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Somewhere in there you may have mentioned Fetch – funny story, apparently I look a lot like Talia from the newest season. (The resemblance is pretty remarkable, but she’s younger than I.)
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Oh yeah, YOU DO. *is not a stalker* That is quite remarkable…
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I know, right?! It’s sort of scary.
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You played Barbie Riding Club, too? I think that was one of my first computer games. I played for MONTHS before I found the hidden cabin.
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Oh yeah, I remember finding the hidden cabin – probably several months after I began playing too, since I was pretty young and therefore kind of slow at finding all the little “mysteries” along the way. It was probably one of my first computer games, too…
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And then, I think it was a few months after that before I finished the storyline where you chase the mystery horse.
Did anybody here play either of the Detective Barbie games? How about Secret Agent Barbie?
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Holy cake, I played that, too. 
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Behind the Lions is the one with the reading lions. I never really watched it, but one of the creators or someone was a friend/fan of Douglas Adams and the male lion sometimes wore a shirt with “42” on it because of that.
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Wasn’t it “Read Between the Lions”? As in, a pun on read between the lines?
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No, as far as I can remember, it was just “Between the Lions”, but yes, it was a pun.
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Something of the sort! I never really watched it. Some of the segments in it annoyed me. I’ve always disliked puns, even when I was little, and a lot of little kid shows would get on my nerves because they assumed that was the only sort of joke kids would get : P
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I think it was Read Between the Lions, actually.
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No, it was just “Between the Lions”. It was one of my favorite shows.
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The PBSkids website calls it Between the Lions. I watched it too, though I don’t really remember much.
Wasn’t there also a show called ‘Reading Rainbow’, or something like that?
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YES THERE WAS A READING RAINBOW, HOW CAN YOU NOT REMEMBER THIS???????
It was an absolutely wonderful show, the black guy with the visor from Star Trek (LeVar Burton) was the host. I remember one episode with optical illusions (had to watch that one again when it aired for the second time in the afternoon because it was so bril), and then there was also one where he talked about hs other job as the dude on Star Trek.
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“…the black guy with the visor from Star Trek…”
Eloquent.
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Well, he is. I mean, that’ who he is, who everyone will always know him as. Not my fault I never saw enough Star Trek (probably only half a dozen eps) to know what his name was on the show.
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In my mind he’s he Reading Rainbow guy first, Star Trek guy second.
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Oh, for me, too, but for older generations (like my Dad), he’s Star Trek guy, not Reading Rainbow. He was on some stupid TV movie earlier this summer, and I recognized him as the guy from Reading Rainbow, pointed this fact out, my sis immediately agree, my dad had no clue who we were talking about, and me and my sis immediately launched into one part disbelief of “how do you not remember reading rainbow?” and one part “Dad, the guy with the visor from Star Trek.” Mom knew who we were talking about with rEading Rainbow, wasn’t entirely certain it was him, and Dad was adamant that it was most certainly, totally, definitively not LeVar Burton. I promptly looked it up on IMDb next commercial, and guess who was right? (lol, yes, my sis and I)
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Yeah, i went and googled it to find this out.
I think I remember the theme song sequence, but I don’t really remember anything else about the show at all. Actually, I think I got it confused with Between the Lions.
I’ll probably go find some episodes on youtube or wherever sometime later and watch them, since you say they’re so good.
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Reading Rainbow was awesome.
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Yeah, it was Read Between the Lions.
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No, it was just Between the Lions.
I remember that! With the compound-word knights, and the Cliffhanger (hanging from a cliff! And that’s why they call him cliffhanger!)! Oh man, I loved that show.
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*laughing* The compound-word knights and the Cliffhanger were epic. *misses watching kid shows on TV*
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Cliffhanger!
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While we’re on TV shows: I remember Sesame Street sans Elmo’s World. I never will understand what possessed them to convert a fourth of the show to a most annoying Elmo segment.
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Really? I loved Elmo’s World, although I can remember before it, too.
Do you remember the storyline where the snail went to the moon?
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‘fraid not…
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I loved Elmo’s World. Humph. *poutpoutpout*
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Thaat’s Elmo’s wooooooooooorld! Heeh, I can play that on my sax. XD
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“Nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah, Elmo’s World!”
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Ewwww, I hated Elmo’s World. It just seemed really fake to me. I mean, Elmo was talking to like, his desk.
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I loved Elmo’s world! He had a goldfish named Dorothy!
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I remember when I found out that Michael Jackson was dead. My sister and I were waiting in a train station in Chartres, France to take us back to Paris. We wandered into a newspaper stand to buy ourselves a drink when my father paused and laughed, “Ha! Michael Jackson is dead!” My sister and I laughed as well, thinking it was a joke. “No, really.” he insisted. “He’s dead.” “No way!” we shouted and peered over his shoulder. In blazing letters on more then one newspaper were phrases like, “Michael Jackson est morte.” My sister and I started yelling things like “Oh my gosh! This can’t be true! He can’t DIE!” The locals stared at us thinking, without a doubt “Just another batch of crazy American tourists.”
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I’d like to reiterate my complaint that MJ’s death is a recent event, not a “remember when” event. It was just a year ago.
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Same here. That’s why I didn’t put anything after 2005 on my list.
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Yes, it’s not so much a test of memory as an interesting bit of information. An insight into their everyday lives.
Notice that everyone remembers exactly where they were when they heard. I think that’s interesting. You don’t usually remember stuff like that about some random celebrity. Maybe your favorite, or something, but for everyone to remember exactly where and when they heard… Isn’t it kind of amazing?
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I have no idea when or where I heard of that pedophile’s death. Or anyone else’s death except my grandparents’.
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Come on, Piggy, Jackson deserves to be remembered for much more than his… ah… recent activities. He revolutionized music! Invented the music video! And all that jazz.
I’m just speaking from what I heard about after his death, but before 2000 it seems he was a pretty neat guy.
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I never liked his music.
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David Bowie has a better claim on inventing music videos, especially as an art form. Anyway, lots of people were creating music videos before Michael Jackson. You could make a case that the Beatles or even the Monkees made them.
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I’m rather with Piggy, here. Never cared for his music or him, or really knew anything about him other than his “recent activities” as you phrase it. And even if he did revolutionize music, I hardly see that as significantly awesome enough to out way child molestation. Few things are significantly awesome enough to forgive such perversities.
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okay first off, i’m not convinced he even was a pedophile. there’s debate over it. i think he just had a really bleeped-up childhood and wasn’t quite emotionally stable.
secondly, i don’t like to judge people on a scale. the idea that good things and bad things cancel each other out just has some serious issues for me. i think you have to take a person as a whole, good and bad, and not try to measure out whether one thing “made up” for another or not. child molestation, if it happened…bad. revolutionizing pop music…good. i’m not going to try to argue that he was a good or bad person overall. i didn’t know him personally. none of us did. but you can’t deny his achievements because something else he did “canceled it out.” everything people do is a part of them, and you can’t just negate peoples’ actions, good or bad.
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I’ll give Michael Jackson this much: his appearance on the Motown anniversary program in the early ’80s was impressive, especially to those who remembered him only as the young boy leading the Jackson 5. But I’m always astonished to hear claims that he revolutionized music.
Jackson was enormously popular with young children (creepy in retrospect), not so much with those who followed the music scene for the music. To my friends and me — who were admittedly pretty snobbish when it came to pop music standards — Jackson was an also-ran, musically speaking, nowhere near the cutting edge. We could have named dozens of groups who had already done that and moved on to more interesting things. Articles I read at the time referred to the “self-anointed ‘King of Pop.’ ”
What he really did, in my opinion, was take the pop currents of the time to the mainstream in a big way. His dance style was widely copied, too.
I don’t say this to trash Jackson; I think he had an impossible sort of life. But it’s interesting to see how differently events are portrayed in later decades, and how hype can become hardened into dogma.
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admittedly, i probably have never even heard of a lot of the pop bands that you would cite as being jackson before jackson. but to my generation, and generations after, he was the one who really characterized pop in a modern sense. maybe it’s more fair to say he popularized it, rather than invented it. but i would argue that bringing styles to a mainstream audience can also be revolutionary. he changed the way people think about pop. him and madonna, really, and it probably is true that he gets more hype about it because of his death. but i’d say he definitely had a huge influence on music. especially in terms of showmanship
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Naturally, we thought Madonna was — to quote Peter O’Toole’s character in “The Ruling Class” — dull, boring, and old hat. We were, after all, Serious about music and wouldn’t have given her the time of day. Our motto for a lot of stuff might have been “Bowie did it better and before.”
I do agree that taking something mainstream can wield enormous power. And Jackson’s showmanship can’t be denied. We might disagree on how to define “revolutionary,” however. Mostly, though, I find it fascinating to see how different events seem “on the ground” compared to how they’re judged later. Who knows what will be remembered from 2010?
By the way, I’m certainly not saying my friends and I were right. (I get no points at all for prognostication. I haughtily said at the time that Madonna was a talent-free publicity hound who would be forgotten in a week.) And to tell the truth, I have myself forgotten the names of at least half the bands I listened to then. But it was such an exciting time! SO much mind-blowing stuff going on in all different directions, even in a town as artistically conservative as D.C. Such amazing talent everywhere.
In the interest of fairness, I should add that I’m biased in part because the early 1980s was the only period in which I was truly au courant and in tune with the leading edge of the contemporary music scene, and I felt the best of it faded from the cultural memory shortly thereafter. Although someone mentioned Eurythmics on the blog recently, so perhaps all is not lost….
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I don’t. I just remember it was summer, and it was summer during the time when I was housesitting, because the caking TV and radio wouldn’t talk about any caking thing else. It annoyed me to no caking end that that was all everything was talking about, and that they were even invading regularly scheduled programming to go on about the death of a child molester I didn’t give a cake about, and what also annoyed me to no caking end was how they were going on an on and on about what a great guy he was, and all the awesome stuff he did, and HELLO, PEOPLE, HE WAS A BLOODY PEDOPHILE, YEAH, REALLY AWESOME AND CAKING GREAT, INNIT IT?
Yes, I was cussing out the TV and radio. I tend to do that.
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Okay, so not everyone. Still, a large fraction of the people, even those like me who have never heard his music, (Or if I have, I didn’t know it) and to whom he’s just a name that you hear occasionally. I don’t really think I even knew much about him before he died.
Actually, I might not remember where I was were in not for Anomylous’s tale, related above. (Post 7.1)
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I was at Junior Statesman Summer School. I found out righ tbefore Congressional Workshop. One of the guys in my group was telling everyone about it, and people were asking him where he found out and stuff. I was mostly uninterested in everything, particularly since I had a debate coming up. (For the record, I won. )
I remember when MJ dangled his baby off the balcony. First time I ever heard of him. I was shocked to find out that he was black. He looked like a completely different person in his youth.
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Don’t know how old this is, but I remember The Land Before Time. Who else does?
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I do. How many movies were there? About five dozen I think.
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I saw this post in the Recent Comments bar and thought you were referring to Air Bud.
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Yes! Treestars! ^^
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Oh… Air bud is scary now. I saw a commericial for a new one where the dogs talk and they become Santas reindeer. #1, the original Air bud did NOT talk and #2 that’s just wrong.
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Goshhh kiwimuncher. Get it straight. Those are AirBuddies. And yes, that is creepy. I really don’t think they can stretch out the series any more.
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OH MY GOSH NO WAY. I loved those movies.
Ducky was my favorite dinosaur. I still say ‘Yep yep yep’ from time to time.
And yep, there’s at least ten of those movies. Kind of ridiculous, but still awesome.
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Yuppers. I loved Petri and Ducky and absolutely hated Cera.
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I remember seeing commercials for it, but I never cared especially for it and I never saw it.
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Oh gosh I loved those movies. Petri and Ducky FTW! And I still get a kick out of how they called leaves ‘tree-stars’…
Beedle– Oh, no, not Air Bud. *grimaces*
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OHMIGOD, YES!!!!! I LOVED those movies! They were so cool. Um…I forget the title, but have you seen the one where the little brontosaurus (I forget his name) had to go because there was an eclipse and all the brontosauri had to go and “lift the sun back up”?
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Littlefoot, and, no, I’ve not seen that one.
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I remember those movies. I cried when Littlefoot’s mother died.
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9/11- I remember watching videos online of the twin towers blowing up, and people crying, but I think that may have been after the fact. I was confused, because it seemed that too many buildings were blowing up and I couldn’t keep them straight. I still don’t know for sure if anything happened to the Pentagon. Whatever that is.
Katrina- The first thing I remember about Katrina is seeing an old newspaper saying that dozens of people were confirmed dead. And thinking “That’s not that many.” And then the numbers grew. This was a little before I’d started really listening to the radio, I think, but I must have heard some stuff about it.
I remember floppy disks, and playing Tetris on an ancient computer. We had a lot of ancient computers lying around. One of them was so old that its screen was orange and all I ever saw anyone do on it was play a game with pipes and flowing water. I didn’t get into the internet until I was eleven or so and I started playing Neopets, but I did have a couple of penpals I got online. And I liked to type things on Notepad. I also remember playing MacBrickout and PopPop and SimCity. But computers weren’t really new to me, because in school they made us do Mavis typing stuff.
I remember making fun of the DVD commercials with the astonished man and the epic voice. But when I saw a DVD for the first time (HP and the Chamber of Secrets), I thought it was so cool that they picture just froze and didn’t have little lines of static running up and down it.
I remember furbies. I never had one, but my friends did. They were all broken.
I used to have tons of cassette tapes. Not even that long ago either. I still remember the music but I no longer have the ability to listen to it, which is sad. Since getting our current car some years ago, we haven’t had that technology anymore.
11- Ooh, Moon Shoes! I thought they were SOOOO cool… but then my sister had a pair and they weren’t that great.
20.1.2.1- Oh, my friend had those! I went over to her house once or twice and we would play Catz and watch Scooby-Doo. We read the same books and both loved to knit, but I think she was a little younger than me. I remember spending New Year’s Eve there in…2004? A long time ago.
24- There was a Little Bear SHOW??? My thoughts be bloody… Those were beautiful books. The makers of the show should go jump off a cliff. Unless maybe we’re thinking of different things? By Maurice Sendak?
I didn’t really watch any shows, except for Wishbone, which I got from the library. I did have a Zoom book of crafts thought.
28- Apparently I watched the Holy Grail ALL THE TIME as a kid. The first time I REMEMBER seeing Holy Grail, I was about eight, and promptly turned around and watched it again, but my parents claim that it was my favorite movie when I was very small, which doesn’t make much sense in my mind.
34- I remember being babysat when I was but a wee thing–probably about five–and watching a Land Before Time movie. I loved it. For years I tried to find it again but I kept finding different ones.
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Alice: I take a bus to the Pentagon on my way to work. Yes, something happened to it.
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It took me awhile to figure out what exactly I wanted to say on this thread, with out deluging you with an uber-long post of ‘Everything FantasyFan Ever Remembers’. Oh well.
Let’s start with the historically and culturally significant one. It’s pretty detailed, too. I was in 4th grade, and 8 years old on 9/11. My family didn’t have a TV and rarely used the radio, so I didn’t have a clue what happened. I woke up and went to school normally. During first period, I noticed that something was wrong. The intercom kept buzzing, and saying, “[insert student name here]’s parents are here to pick you up. Please go to the office immediately.” I remember remarking sarcastically to the person sitting next to me, ‘It’s like there’s a plague going on or something.”
Then the intercom turned on again and said that all students were to come to the Center hall. I think we were all nervous and curious. Possibly wondering what we’d done wrong and if we were in for a schoolwide lecture (again). We lined up and the other students didn’t know where the Center Hall Was. I was impatient and wanted to get there quickly, so I was saying something like ‘you dummy, it’s the cafeteria’. Then the teacher came and we all went down and sat down at tables by class.
The principal got up on the stage in front and said, “Today, two planes crashed into the World Trade Center and they think Muslims did it. Our school has received bomb threats, so we’ll all be sending you home for a couple of days.” (Yes, it was an Islamic school I went to)
I spent the next hour or so shocked and convinced that if I didn’t get out quick I was going to die. My mom was a teacher there and so we were one of the last to leave. I took all my school stuff home because I thought it would get blown up.
When we got home, I went over to my neighbor’s house, who went to the same school, and watched footage of the planes crashing into the towers over and over and over again.
The next day I was playing hopscotch in my driveway (no school), and a plane flew overhead, and I was scared it’d fall down and crush me.
When school resumed, we held a media conference at the school, condemning the attack, yadda yadda yadda. We had to wait forever for the camera crew to arrive. And I may have ended up on TV saying that if the hijackers were Muslim, they weren’t very good ones. Didn’t have a TV, though, so it’s not like I saw myself on it or anything.
I remember the FBI guys coming to the mosque some months afterward.
This is a long post and it was pretty tiring to write, so I’ll go post all the other things I remember later.
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(reply i meant to post earlier, saved it and posting it now with some things added…)
This is interesting! I find all accounts by the GAPAs interesting too, I love hearing stuff like this…
Things about the Beatles…My mom had Beatles trading cards! I’m not sure how that worked since there are only four of them but apparently she always wanted the ones with George Harrison because he was her favorite (she calls him the “gentle Beatle” lol)
I meant to ask my mom more about her experience actually…
Are any of the GAPAs (or anyone else for that matter) familiar with Herman’s Hermitts? I think they’re from around the same time, my mom liked a lot of silly music in her youth…anyway I love them.
What were the 80s like? My mom claims it as the most exciting decade.
What Rebecca was saying about having a hard time separating what one experienced and what was subsequently played on television etc is true for me too.
I have things to recount but I’ll be honest I’m much more interested in hearing from the GAPAs everyone’s posts are interesting though, seriously, i love reading things like this.
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*sings*
Mrs. Brown, you’ve got a lovely daughter.
Girls as sharp as her are something rare…
Anybody who listened to the radio in the early-to-mid-1960s is familiar with Herman’s Hermits.
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I served dinner to Peter Noone and his current Hermits a few years ago when they were performing locally. They were the most fun!
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I’m Henry the eighth, I am, henry the eighth I am I am, I got married to the widow next door, she’s been married seven times before..
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I had no idea they were so popular, Robert! interesting…
Rebecca- That’s amazing!!! my mom showed me a bunch of old tv broadcasts of them singing and they seemed really nice so that’s cool!!
lizzie that was the first song i was familiar with cause my mom would sing it…ahaha
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Maybe the trading cards were the various Beatles in different situations or costumes?
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i think that must be it! i can’t think of anything else that would explain it…
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FantasyFan- Wow. How old were you then? And are you actually Muslim?
Luna- Was that Tuvok? Who I know nothing about except that he was *drool* Vulcan?
I can’t remember 9/11, and I remember Hurricane Katrina but not when I first heard about it.
Michael Jackson’s death– I was standing around in the corridor with some popular girls before homeroom, and they were talking about it. I might be mixing up memories, but I think they we were going to be told about our next year’s electives in homeroom, and I didn’t know much about Michael Jackson so it was forgotten.
Another, more specific memory: I remember the Beaconsfield, Tasmania, mine collapse and rescue because I was watching TV that morning and they interrupted programs to tell us about it. Naturally, i was annoyed, even if was interesting.
I had a pair of Tamagotchis at one point. (I still do, but the batteries died and I didn’t bother to replace them.)
I vaguely remember floppy discs and definitely videos.
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I really don’t know…I watched so little Star Trek, and his role on that was only referred to once that I recall on Reading Rainbow, so….I really don’t know the name of who he played.
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Bit of a late reply, but oh well…I was 8. And yes, I am actually Muslim.
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I remember 9/11. I was in the 3rd grade and I had no idea what was going on. I just knew that all the teachers were crying and they wouldn’t allow anyone to turn on the TVs because they thought it might traumatize us little children. I remember that I didn’t really understand it.
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GAPAs, I have a question for you… Do you know of the ’60s show “It’s About Time”? My mom randomly remembered the really annoying catchy theme song and we watched some of it on YouTube. It’s really hilarious how bad of a show it was.
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Hostess Sno Balls were hilariously bad, too, but I loved them. I think I saw every episode.
*sings*
It’s about two astronauts!
It’s about their fate!
It’s about a woman and her prehistoric mate!
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Hostess Sno Balls? I never had the nerve to try one. And sadly it seems, this is the first I’ve heard of “It’s About Time.”
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Whhhaaaat? I love Sno Balls! They’re so grossly unhealthy you have to love them. I wonder what was going on in the creator’s mind… “So, let’s take the most unhealthy things on Earth (chocolate cake, marshmallows, and filling), mush them all together in a snack, and put coconut on the top to make it seem a little bit healthy!”
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Do you actually remember the lyrics? That song is the best part of the show for me!
And I have never eated a Sno Ball, mostly because I didn’t like coconut when I was young enough that my mom would get them for me.
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Rubber ducky, you’re the one,
You make bath time lots of fun,…
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This thread started me thinking about what the “Do you remember? 2020 Edition” might look like. Some possibilities:
Any thoughts as to what we might be visiting on Memory Lane ten years from now?
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Along the lines of “electric cords,” any sort of internet other than wireless (dial up, DSL, cable, anything with a cord).
Might think of more later…
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Hmm…
-Actual, legitimate farms
-Rainforests
-Polar bears
Oh, I’m just Ms. Optimistic, aren’t I?
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The space shuttle.
Telephones that only make phone calls.
Non-HD photos/videos.
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Summer vacations.
Legal tobacco.
Relatively unregulated internet.
Physical buttons on electronic devices.
Nonpersonalized advertisements.
Adobe Flash.
Facebook and Twitter.
The obesity epidemic.
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*wails to your first one* SUMMERMUSTLIVEON.
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When I read that, my first thought was, “Oh no, is Summer Glau dead?”
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No, though she always looks hungry.
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Summer Glau’s immortal, silly.
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Oh no, I think summer vacation should be shorter. Have you read that Time article about it? (I love Time.) It presents a really good case against summer vacation. Plus, literally an hour after I got home, I was bored. Really, what can you do during it? It’s roughly 90-100 days of boredom, summer homework, and basically nothing to do (except I do like the opportunity for camps).
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Ugh. Time. Blech. Worthless magazine.
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If Time is worthless, then what is your quality for worthful?
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Hm. The Economist is awesome. Foreign Affairs can be interesting too, though a bit pretentious. Time is more of a pop culture magazine with “current events” sprinkled in, as opposed to an actual news-based magazine. This would be fine if it didn’t try to pass itself off as the latter.
Incidentally, you could try “worthy” next time.
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I would say don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, but you probably have. In that case, I would cordially ask you to hold your tongue because I FREAKING LOVE TIME.
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But it summer means that you can finally get to work on interesting stuff and not just whatever’s going on in school *loves summer* *wails at the thought of only 9 more days*
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You know, I’ve never understood how people always whinge on about how long summer is, and how boring, and how there’s absolutely nothing to do. Because even before I got a job (and thus was working large portions of my summer), I never once lacked for anything to do, and never remember being bored during the summer.
Personally, I do not think summer vacation should be shortened at all. I, for one, need the time to recoup from the stresses of schoolwork, it allows me a chance to refresh my brain, allowing me to be fresh and ready to start another school year once August rolls around again.
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I totally agree with you. Summer is a time to relax, and I’d rather be bored than stressed. At least when I’m bored, I have free time and can go read a book or go swimming or something.
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Definitely. I’m never bored during summer vacation, and it gives me time to do things I’d never be able to do during the school year.
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See, when I have free time, I can read, but I haven’t had new non-school books to read for a little while, so I get bored. And I have to watch my sister all day, who despises the outdoors more than I do (FREAKING ALLERGIES).
The pattern that happens every year: Excited for summer to start, I make a list of projects I want to do before summer’s end. I get home, get bored, and attempt to start one. I fail. Then, my sister enters the picture the next weekday, and suddenly I have to cope with making her food, not leaving her home alone, and trying not to kill her. Plus, I don’t have any mode of transportation besides a bike and my feet, the nearest store is on the highway, and our neighborhood doesn’t have any children.
I know this seems whiny (“you’re complaining about so much free time!”), but I would honestly much rather have a shorter summer break with winter break, etc. extended. 3 months is just too long for me.
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Have you read the Time articlethat started this thread? It’s ridiculous.
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–lack of national standards in schools
–I can’t think of anything else…
Of course, ten years later, we’ll probably all come back to this site, or at least an archived version of it, and laugh at how advanced we thought we’d be, and how similar everything is.
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-2D movies
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Slow computers
2D television
Either PC or Apple. Can’t tell which, but it will probably either become a monopoly or two very compatible systems
The relation between Google and Tianemenn (sp?) Square
Viral videos- how many really popular/ good ones have you seen recently?
“Frankenfoods” (and fear of)
Iraq/ Afghan war- Too soon to be studied in school, too late for remembering, unless we’re still there.
Not understanding forgien languages (Translation tools will become quick and good.)
Incandescent lights (And possible even flourescent)
That’s what I can think of now, though it would be more likely to be the 2030 list.
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This might be insane, but watching TV on a legitimate television? So many people are turning to Hulu and YouTube these days ‘cuz of the lack of necessity of paying.
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This is a great thread. Prepare for a very long post.
I remember being told about how amazing floppy discs were. I also remember the first computer games I played, “Jumpstart” 2 or 4, I can’t remember which. Probably 2. It was an “educational” and “adventure based” learning software game that my grandma had, and she had a computer. So I played it at her house. It was really easy. I also remember playing the Stuart Little game that was based off the movie.
I don’t remember the first time I used the internet. I remember taking a computer basics class at our public library, and it was on some now antiquated version of windows, but I know I’d used computers before that and was bored throughout much of the beginning of the class and playing with Paint.
I have a typewriter in my room still. It lives in its case next to the washing machine, and I’m sure there’s still paper in there waiting to be used. I haven’t used it in ages though, since the ink ribbons aren’t readily available anymore, as far as I know.
I do clearly remember going to get my typewriter and my mom’s touched up though, by Mr. Leather who shared a warehouse building with a used business furniture business. I used to play in the mass of office chairs while we waited for his repairs. I called it “chair forest” because it was literally hundreds of office chairs and to a small person all the bottoms looked like tree trunks and roots.
I also remember Mr.Leather’s hours get less and less as fewer people brought their typewriters in to get fixed, and thinking he looked kind of sad.
9/11. I don’t remember many details, other than it was a regular, kind of slow morning, and mom and I were probably just starting to eat breakfast when the phone rang and mom told me to turn on the radio, which was strange because she can’t hear it, so we never listened to it. Especially not the news. All I heard was that terrorists (whoever they were) had taken some planes and crashed into some important towers in New York, and that it was very serious and something might happen closer to home.
Oddly enough, I don’t really remember the Pentagon attack, though I do remember feeling unsafe, as we all did. DC is about an hour away form where I live, and Camp David is pretty close too. I remember the planes that flew over day and night in the months following the attacks. They scared me, because I didn’t know if they were there to protect us, or whether they were on some more sinister mission. After a while though they got less frightening and I was just annoyed at the noise they made.
I remember Giga Pets. My grandma got one for all my other cousins (at that point I was the youngest and despised of her 5 grandchildren. One day they all went shopping and she got them each one, but not me. I felt so left out, because I wanted one in the worst way. I remember sitting on the porch that summer afternoon and my cousins telling me to not make any noise because I’d wake up their Giga Pets. They also said I couldn’t sit on the porch swing because there wasn’t room and they didn’t want me to. So I sat on the cellar doors being bored and feeling left out until the swing broke. As they all scrambled I tried not to laugh, but regained some faith that the universe has its own justice.
But I digress. After that incident my grandma and I went to a McDonalds (heaven forbid) when I was with her and she gave me a cheap puppy Giga Pet knockoff. It was cheap and I could never get it to play, and I knew it was a knockoff, but I took the best care of it I could until I lost it. It was green and had ears on the top of it. It must have fallen out of my coat pocket at some point, because I remember eventually giving up hope when I couldn’t find it in the coat closet.
Some time after that Ginni, who was more like family than anyone I’m blood related to, got me a REAL giga pet. It was a mermaid, and I named her Ariel. I was so proud of her, she was beautiful and lived in a transparent yellow case with blue, green and purple flowers on the sides. It was cool because you could see the circuitry and batteries inside. I had her for a few years, and she never died. She was one of my favorite toys ever. Partially because she was cool, partially because Ginni had helped me save face by having a real Giga Pet instead of some stupid imitation. It’s good to feel loved when others let you down.
I had two furbies. The first time I saw one was at a friend’s birthday party, where one was the prize for one of the games. I got second place and was so disappointed. I moped and finally my parents relented and got me a furby baby. It was violently blue and pink with a white belly. I then found a grey furby at a Salvation Army that was really cheap and I bought it. My furbies didn’t really learn or ever repeat what I said, which was disappointing. I tried to teach them things, but they were exceptionally dumb. They never chatted together either that I recall, though I tried to get them to. The most exciting thing was that I almost lost the grey one down a groundhog hole while poking around a sunken in building with one of my friend’s one day. It survived though.
I also wrote to the furby company (on my typewriter) to request a manual and dictionary, as I’d lost the ones I’d had. They sent back a polite letter and the manual, addressed to a Mr. Fern *******, which I found baffling. Fern isn’t a masculine name! But my mom explained that when people aren’t sure of someone’s gender generally they guess for male. I thought it was weird and outdated, since there were just as many businesswomen as businessmen.
I also remember when American Girl was still the Pleasant Company. I have doll hairbrushes that say that on them. I also remember when the first modern American Girl dolls came out. I have a “lookalike” doll named Iris. I saved up and bought her myself.
I remember when most of the historical dolls were new, as well. I remember and have a lot of the discontinued items that were really detailed and great too, before they were bought out by the same company that makes Barbie dolls.
I remember the first, and only, TV my family bought. We got it for my grandpa, who was dying of cancer so he’d be able to watch when he was bedridden. I vaguely remember going into Circuit City or Best Buy or whatever store it was and being overwhelmed by the walls of TVs.
The one we picked out was on the larger end of mid-sized, about 2′ on the diagonal and a little deeper than that. It pops when you turn it on and off, and when you touch the glass screen it feels weird and sizzles.
After he died we got the TV to use, and since there wasn’t any room in the house we put it in the barn, where it still is. A strawbale fell on it, so it got a green spot in the corner, that spread over the rest of the screen to the point that it’s now unusable.
I remember hooking up bunny ears to it once, however, and getting a very fuzzy channel and watching Gilligan’s Island, enthralled that OUR TV could get a channel! I also remember during the Bush vs. Kerry campaign we hooked the bunny ears up again (this time we’d brought the TV into the house and set it in the kitchen). My parents and I clustered around it and watched one of Bush’s speeches and marveled that such a person would get so far in a serious campaign and my parents said something about how there was little chance he could win, and god help us if he did. Then they may have had a debate about Republicans, I don’t really remember.
We watched Fear Factor that night too, and it was a lot more interesting. I wondered how people could waste so much time watching other people doing dumb things for money.
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Sadly, Fear Factor is one of the least stupid reality TV shows that are/were around…
As for American Girl doll stuff, I didn’t even realize they were no longer the Pleasant Company, as they were when I was going through my American Girl doll phase…
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*sings*
Jump-start, first-grade, everyone up front!
Are you okay for a treasure hunt?
Let’s go visit this island, get to know it by heart,
you’ll have the pleasure of looking for treasure…
I got Jumpstart 1&2 grade from a friend and my sister was always singing the first grade theme…
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I first heard about Michael Jackson’s death from a horrifically creepy clown who was making balloon animals outside the Vancouver Aquarium (in BC). At first, I couldn’t believe it – partly because it came from a guy on a unicycle who didn’t seem quite sane, but also because I had never known a world that he didn’t live in. It just didn’t seem possible that he, who seemed kind of timeless anyways, was gone from it.
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Michael Jackson’s death. If I recall correctly I was eating dinner with my parents in our favorite Ethiopian restaurant outside of DC and they were talking about it on the TVs above the bar. Dad went to the bathroom to wash his hands and came back and just stopped next to the table and stared at the TV for a few moments and then said something like “no!” in a surprised voice and when we asked what was going on he said that Michael Jackson had died. It didn’t really affect me that much, other than “Oh wow, Michael Jackson died. That’s too bad, but it doesn’t really mean a whole lot to me. I wonder when our food will come.”
It still doesn’t mean that much, other than it’s kind of sad how fame messed up his life.
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I don’t even remember when I found out Micheal Jackson was dead. I know this sounds kind of cruel, but I didn’t really care all that much…I was never really a fan of him, but didn’t really have any passionate hate for him, either.
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I had mostly the same emotions towards him, but he’d always been a distant part of pop culture for me, and it was weird to think that he could die just like everybody else.
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Do you remember when gas stations had people to fill your car with gas for you? (there might still be some that I don’t know of)
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I’m pretty sure that’s based on what state you live in. For example, in Delaware I know that you pump your own gas, but in New Jersey, it’s the law that the people have to fill your car for you.
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Oh, yes, I remember…We use to have gas stations back home where you at least had the option of having a gas station attendant fill your car for you. Now they’re all self-serve and you’ve gotta do it yourself. I think by the time I was old enough to drive they’d all become self-serve a fair while before.
How’s about: Does anyone remember when gas stations weren’t all (or certainly weren’t predominantly) pre-pay or pay-at-the-pump? I remember you use to be able to fill your car, know exactly how much you owed, and then take the money in, and now you’ve got to guess how much it’s going to cost, go in, give them the money (or swipe a credit card, if you prefer), fill your car and either not get it completely full because you didn’t give ’em enough money, or you ahve to go back in *again* to get yoru change…bleh.
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I think that still occurs places with lots of business, because it goes faster.
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They still do that in New Jersey, Oregon, and the Philippines. I don’t remember a time outside of those places where someone filled up gas for you (though, admittedly, I never paid attention to that).
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MJ’s death… Prepare for an amusing/stupid story.
So Mom and I had just gotten home from a pedicure, and I was mad that I had to wear flip-flops because up until about six months ago flip-flops destroyed my toes, so I collapsed angrily in a chair (same chair I’m sitting in now, actually) and flipped open my laptop and Mom turned on the TV. And the headline running at the bottom of the screen was “Michael Jackson is dead.” And I was like, “Waitaminute, I can’t have read that right. Michael Jackson? Like, crazy plastic-surgery child-molester Michael Jackson?”
So I Googled it, and it was true. And then I searched it on Wikipedia, and the label said it was a controversial article because stuff was still happening fast. And Michael Jackson was dead, and then my mom’s friend Clair called since we were about to head up to the mountains for the Fourth of July and there would be an annual chili cookoff that their family always participated in and did we want to come? And of course we did. And often, people’s chili had a theme, and they had been going to do an environmentalist theme but what with MJ being dead how about “Thrilla Chilla”? And then I suggested “Chili Jean” and it kind of worked out.
So that’s my memory of Michael Jackson’s death. Up in the mountains, wearing a single black glove and a white T-shirt, carrying a sign in the Fourth of July parade and shouting “Vote 8J for MJ! Chili Jean! A tasty tribute to the King of Pop! Happy Fourth of July! Vote MJ, Thrilla Chilla, Michael Jackson Chili!” Which was upholding the ancient and noble tradition of advertising our chili in the parade.
We won Best Junior Chili and Best Chili Spirit. I felt so exploitative. Then I forgot about it.
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I just thought of one I’m surprised hasn’t been mentioned yet: the start of the ISS. The earliest I remember of the ISS is the 3D IMAX movie I saw of it in 2002. I thought it was awesome.
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I remember reading an article about its construction in an issue of Time for Kids from 2000, when I was in fourth grade. That was the first I heard of it, although I knew about space stations already because there had been some stuff on the news about Mir that I had seen.
I thought it was very cool, but what I remember most was reading the caption that said “This is how the space station will look when it is completed in 2006”. (This was before the Columbia disaster, obviously. Now we know that it will be structurally complete later this year, but the writer of the article obviously couldn’t have known, so don’t knock en for that.)
I had just watched the Summer Olympics in Sydney, and my mom had said the next Summer Olympics would be in Athens in 2004, which I thought was a really long time to wait, so my reaction was “2006? That’s the next Olympics and THEN two years. That’s FOREVER!”
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When MJ died I was at camp and I thought: “Now nobody can make jokes about him for a while” and nothing more.
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I remember 9-11. I was in first grade. We were doing normal stuff when the TV flipped on (the Central Office has control of all the TVs) and we saw the news. I didn’t really understand, but my teacher said a lot of people had died, and then we got into a discussion about some war or event or something we had studied, where a lot of people had also died.
I loved Magic School Bus and Digimon growing up. MY mom would tape them (they came on while I was at school) and I could watch when I finished homework and chores. That was the highlight of my day. In the 4th grade, my family moved to Germany, on an Army base, where we only had seven channels. I discovered internet TV eaarly…:)
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9/11-I was in kindergarten. My mom picked me up and said something bad happened. First thing I said-“Did I do it?” And I also remember looking at a picture of the New York skyline that evening. I had a really weird dream. Off to the random thread.
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Ow. I would not want to be your mom when you asked if you did it. I would start crying hysterically and laughing hysterically and then I would crash the car.
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I don’t actually remember 9/11. I think I was too little–only… what, 2? Yes… So that makes sense.
Anyway, I actually don’t remember much of anything major happening. Well, besides Micheal Jackson’s death, of course, but I hadn’t ever actually thought of that as a major event, to be honest. Sure, I was somewhat disappointed, but to be honest… I know it sounds extremely callous, and I suppose it is, but really, I was amazed at how strongly people reacted to it. It was as if they’d though fame makes you immortal, or something… So people were getting much more upset over it than they were about multiple other, lesser-known, sometimes younger people dying at once, which I didn’t really understand… But maybe that’s because I know absolutely nothing about Micheal Jackson!
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I didn’t really expect him to die so soon, but I didn’t know anything about him either. I only knew of his child molestation/abuse/whatever days, and it slowly dawned on me as a freshman that he was a musician and people liked him. So that’s why I was like, “meh”; because I didn’t know him or his music before all the weird stuff.
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Concerning old video games–I don’t remember floppy discs as games. I would always use them as storage devices, especially in those two or so crazy years before the advent of USB storage devices when CDs were the most advaced form of storage. They never worked for me so I used floppys.
One of the first video games I ever played was Oregon Trail II in 1st grade. I liked the fact that everyone wanted to get to Oregon (where I live) and that you got to shoot things, like an action game. As soon as it came out, I got Oregon Trail III and I was super excited when halfway through my adventure it told me to “Insert Disc 3,” which to me meant that I was a truly accomplished Oregon Trail gamer.
Anyone remember Putt-Putt? The purple car? Those were my favorite video games. Mostly because of the cute dog.
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9/11: I remember hearing about it in sixth grade and then going home and talking to my parents about it. I remember not understanding why people would want to kill so many people.
Michael Jackson: I don’t remember his death. Well, I remember that it happened, and thinking “huh.” but I don’t remember how it fit into the context of my life. Perhaps because I don’t generally remember Michael Jackson
I remember my family’s film camera and how exciting it was when we got our first digital one.
I remember Pogs.
I remember VHS.
I remember cassette players. We had lots of tapes when I was a kid.
I remember when macs all came with this game involving lady bugs and stuff and I went to a camp where we used macs and played that game. I took a journalism class there and we each got our own floppy disk to put our articles on to transfer them from computer to computer. I thought that was so cool. That year was the first year the class used digital cameras too.
I remember when my dad had an AOL email account and he heard the “You’ve got mail!” message.
I remember neopets, furbies, Polly Pocket, Pokemon.
I remember supermunchers
I remember the Bush vs. Gore election being the first election I paid much attention too. Before that I knew that Clinton was president and whether or not my family liked him as president (vaguely) but I had a vested interest in the election results for the first time in the Bush vs. Gore elections.
I remember voting for the first time for the McCain vs. Obama election.
I remember American Girl Dolls.
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Oh, film cameras. We still have one, but it doesn’t work very well, so we don’t usually use it. Alas. I do remember going to get the film developed on Thursdays though, since on Thursdays they gave you free doubles.
I also remember having those tiny Polly Pockets, and not wanting to let my cousin play with them for fear he’d lose the pieces (since we were playing with them outside, and they like to get lost in grass and leaves).
I remember when cell phones were the size of (now) normal phones and had pull out antennas and flip down parts on the bottom.
I also remember bag phones. Does anyone else remember those? It looked like a briefcase but when you opened it there was a mess of wires and a phone handset. I remember when they were all new and exciting and people put them in their cars for emergencies. Then cell phones came out and they were kind of dumb looking. But I remember them. My grandma had one, and then my dad got one for work.
Erm…..I’m still always surprised when I think that kids born after the year 2000 are 10 years old now. I’m just so used to birthdates being 19-something.
I remember when Lindsay Lohan was a cute little kid and I wanted to look like her.
*feels old*
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Same here. It surprises me to run into mature children with birthdates that don’t begin with “19”.
Although, when I was a docent at the Cradle of Aviation Museum, I loved the look in the eyes of the elementary schoolers when I told them “People have been living in space continuously every second of every day for your entire lives!”
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9/11 – I was almost 4, and remember watching it live on TV. Earliest memory.
I remember the big change from film to digital, at least in everyone we knew. And going to pick up film…at Wal-Mart.
I remember the release of Call of Duty 3 and PS2.
I also remember Bugdom (Oxlin) Cro-Mag Rally and Nanosaur.
VHS, who could forget? Three drawers of massive plastic tapes.
I remember switching from dialup to Satellite and then to cable.
Dialup, as far as I can remember, sucked. You gawt mail!
I remember when Pokemon Sapphire was new. I bought it and still have it.
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oh, yeah. film at wal-mart. i remember that
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Oh, why thank you, spambots.
9/11… that was during my fourth birthday party. I had just blown out the candles on my cake, and my mom turned on the news and started crying, which was what shocked me, because I was four, and thought my parents were completely unshakable. Our TV resolution was really bad, so the only information I absorbed was that a building collapsed. For weeks I was terrified that my bedroom ceiling would fall down. And when we turned on the radio all I heard was someone crying into the microphone. The phone system was jammed, like it is after every earthquake when everyone’s calling each other to make sure they’re okay. What happened didn’t really affect me until later, when I found out my cousin and his fiancee were on flight 93. They were going to get married in San Fransisco. When it happened they just told me he died, and I was too miserable to ask how.
Michael Jackson- Nerdily enough, I didn’t know who he was until after he died, because of all the publicity about his doctor, Howard Murray. I had heard his music on the radio, and seen his picture a few times, but didn’t connect the two.
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9/11…. I don’t really remember it, being in kindergarten at the time, but I do know how my family was affected. My uncle was supposed to be in one of the towers. We couldn’t find him. The shock of it put my mom into labor. The next day, we found my uncle. He had been stuck at his apartment, waiting for the plumber who was late. It saved his life. That day, 9/12 was my grandmother’s 60th birthday. She said the gift of my little brother was the gift ever.
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I don’t really remember 9/11, which isn’t all that suprising because I was only 3 when it happened. One of my classmates was born on 9/11 (not 2001 but 1996) and was having her birthday like CO when it happened. Later my parents told me that they would have picked me up but everyone was saying it wasn’t neccesary, don’t panic, yada yada yada. Plus, she was like 40 miles away at the time.
MJ- I had listened to some of his more popular songs but never really knew much about him until he died and suddenly all the news would talk about was the life of MJ and the controversy behind his death.
I don’t really remember much about Katrina, but I am always shocked when people tell me it was almost 6 years ago because it seemed to me like it happened much more recently than that. The news started up a donation program and kept coming up with speeches from Bush on how much money was being donated
I don’t know if this is a do you remember thing because it was fairly recent (though longer ago than the death of MJ) but I remember following the election of Obama really closely and being really mad when my parents wouldn’t let me stay up late to hear the election results come in. When he was inaguarated, classes kept letting us come down to the chorus room to watch instead of actually having class. I remember walking into math class and everyone wasn’t paying attention so eventually the teacher just gave up and let us go down to watch. I remember the swearing in and the poem Praise Song for the Day, which I thought was interesting though not incredible.
Random things I remember
-VHS
-Pokemon Yellow which I got for my 4th or 5th birthday
-Gameboy Pocket (which does not fit in anyone’s pocket) which is really interesting to look at now even though it is broken because the game cartridges are huge and it has a really tiny screen for such a big thing.
-Getting a shot on Christmas Eve becuase I had strep throat.
-I once got chased by an elk in Yellowstone
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I don’t remember much about 9-11 except that it was around the time I started my horrible selfish child phase (3rd grade) and if I tell anyone what 8 year old me thought you will all hate me forever. Now I can’t believe that I was ever so insensitive and selfish.
I no longer relate well to younger me, so the things that I did and thought when I was younger don’t make me feel bad about myself. They make me feel bad about “younger me” and how unstable and easily upset she was.
Does anyone else remember their childhood in the third person?
Because I’m so different from how I was, anything from around 8th grade and earlier was done by “younger me”, who I consider an entirely different person mentally from myself. I suppose younger me was also physically different because I don’t remember how it felt to be smaller than I currently am.
Does anyone remember how it felt to be small? Not just in remembering that you had to jump on the counter to get a glass from the cupboard, but actually remembering how your body felt when you moved compared to how it feels now.
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It’s okay, I was a pretty horrible person in elementary school, too. I was also afraid pretty much everything, including believing at one time that there was both a ghost in my closet and a yeti in the hallway outside my bedroom.
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I remember Katrina. I was young and I remember we got all these tropical storms which were weakened hurricanes coming up from the coast. It rained so much I think they canceled school, but I can’t remember.
9/11 I don’t remember, but my mom says she remembers dropping me off for preschool that day.
I remember when MJ was a really hot topic, but I had no idea he had died since I’m clueless about pop culture.
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I’ve been thinking: 9/11 may be the defining moment of my generation. For one generation, it was Pearl Harbor; for another, perhaps, the Summer of Love; for another, the fall of the Berlin Wall. It depresses me that the moment for me is one so horrendously tragic.
As for other things I remember, and related whatnots:
I’ve only recently realized what an important opportunity I had, to see Paul McCartney perform live in 2002. I’ll never be able to say I saw the Beatles, but I’ll be among the youngest to see any members of arguably the most influential and important musicians of the 20th century perform live. I’m glad that I had a chance to live that history.
What else? Katrina, of course, and the Sri Lanka tsunami, and all the other recent natural disasters. And, of course, the enormous revolutions in the Middle East and elsewhere right now. The 2000 election. Saddam Hussein’s capture. Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Y2K worries, climax, and enormous celebration (which coincides with my first remembered usage of Silly String). The ISS. The Human Genome Project. 56k modems. AOL demo floppies. Camera phones. Blackberries. iPods. The exponential growth of computing technology. Fossil fuels. Helium. Hummers. $1.00/gallon for gas. $4.00/gallon for gas. Greece. Tunisia. Egypt. Libya. Tibet. Palestine. Mexico.
Today is history. Never forget that.
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*coughcoughyouforgottoputobamaonthatspiffylistofyourscoughcough*
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Along with tsunamis and Saddam Hussein and 9/11?
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Along with the positive things includedinyour list.
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I don’t see Obama as very historical. Not yet, anyway. I’ll see how he’s remembered a few decades from now.
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Obama was kind of historical for me, because it was the first election I actually paid attention to, and because I wasn’t there but pretty much everyone on our block here threw a party.
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I feel like he’ll always be a historical fact, at least. As in “who was the first African-American president of the US, kids?” “Barack Obama!” Maybe just trivia, at the least.
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I don’t get it. He wasn’t born in Africa, so he’s not African-American. And he’s as much “white” as “black”.
I’ve never understood why race continues to be a thing. If we want people of different “races” or what-have-you to be equal, why are so many distinctions made? Why do we define people by the color of their skin while saying that this definition will somehow help to break down racial barriers? If one of a person’s grandparents were of African descent, why is that person labeled “black”, since that’s a custom that came down directly from slave trading? Why is there a Black History Month if we’re all equal citizens of the same country? Why are there scholarships for black students or Asian students or Latino students while a scholarship only for white students would be horrendously racist? As long as we make any sequestration by race, race is always going to be a problem.
In my eyes, Obama’s just the 44th president. He holds no inherent distinction due to the color of his skin or the geographical location of his ancestors.
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The reason that it’s historic is that there’s a long history of discrimination in this country against those with darker skin, and having a president with darker skin shows that maybe, just maybe, some of that is beginning to be behind us.
It’s fine to say that you don’t think that race is a thing, that everyone’s equal, but the ability to ignore race completely is kind of a white privilege thing. It’s harder to ignore race when you can’t go shopping without being followed for fear that you’ll shoplift, when your children are never taught in schools about people who look like you, when all your actions are seen through the lens of your skin color. Ignoring race is a noble sentiment, but our society remains incredibly sensitive to race, and that is what stuff like Black History Month is supposed to help. It’s telling the non-white of us, “hey, you were important too.” It’s trying, in some way, to give the minorities what the majority takes for granted. There’s a pretty good piece called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh that I’d suggest you look up.
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The only reason these discriminations occur is because distinctions continue to be made between races. No distinction, no discrimination.
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But race is also tied up with ethnic identity and cultural traditions. Should that be ignored, too? Would you want your heritage blotted out so you would blend indistinguishably from everyone else? We have a long history of religious discrimination as well. Should we erase the distinctions there?
What practical steps do you think would be necessary to end discrimination?
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Also, distinctions are inevitable. You can still have equality and tolerance, and at the same time not pretend not to notice that different people have different skin pigmentation or accent. You can have distinction- as in, this is a historic victory, after centuries of discrimination and freedom struggles we finally have a black president- without discrimination or prejudice.
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Rebecca- I highly prize culture and hope that distinctive cultures are retained. But culture should not define a person; neither should religion or favorite food or eye color.
Lizzie- I didn’t have time to mention it this morning, but: I resent your accusation that my opinion is “white”. Many people with all sorts of skin colors agree with me. There’s a good video on YouTube of Morgan Freeman expressing his dislike of Black History Month and such. To say that this opinion is “white” only serves to widen the gap between people of different races. It categorizes and minimizes human beings in just the way that causes racial tension.
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(Also, what are these scholarships for Asians? I’d really like to know.)
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must respectfully disagree with you there, he is our first African-American president and regardless what his politics are, that fact is amazing.
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Agreed. Particularly so when our country fought a civil war over the issue. was deeply divided over school desegregation, and is still working on being unbiased today. Whether we like it or not, race has played an important role in American history, and Obama’s election is a milestone in that history no matter how you look at at.
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My mother was 10 when man first landed on the moon. She doesn’t remember it.
…I’m really not sure how that could happen, but it’s really too bad. I’m sure it must have been amazing. It was probably the defining moment of her generation, and she forgot it.
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I don’t actually remember 9/11. I first heard about it a couple of days later, but even then I don’t think I understood what it was. I was about seven at the time.
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Exact same. My parents told me about it the weekend after and I was kind of just like “Oh. That’s sad, okay,” and went back to what I was doing. How do you explain something of that magnitude to a seven-year-old? I didn’t see any of the footage until I was fourteen, and that’s when it really started to hit home.
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I remember 9/11. I was probably…5? and I was home from school because we were planning to go to Florida but decided not to at the last minute. The television at that point was in our basement and I remember going downstairs in my pajamas to find my mom. She was watching the tv and crying and I saw the twin towers burning and she told me to stay up in my room. I asked her what was happening and she sat on her knees so her face was level with mine and told me that there were “bad” people in the world, who treat other people without kindness and respect, and that some of them had done a very bad thing. Then I think she told me they had flown planes into the towers but I can’t be sure. I just remember that later she told me that you could have seen the towers out the window of my great-great-aunt’s house, and then whenever as the years went by we were watching a film set in New York she’d say “Look. Those are the towers. I wish you could have seen them.”
Then of course we’d have school assemblies each year, and we’d sing or something about peace. By 6th grade I was sort of wondering why it was still such a big deal, then in 7th grade we watched a documentary explaining what lead up to 9/11 and ending with the footage and how many people died and some of the stories of the survivors and only then did I really get it. I cried.
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I remember that my parents had the TV on which was odd because they never watch TV in the mornings, especially on a school day. I snuck a peak at the screen and all I saw was a big tower with black smoke coming out of it against a bright blue sky. Then everything was explained at school.
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My parents remember the first moon landing, but when I asked my dad to tell me some interesting detail about his own experience in watching it, all he could say was “We had spaghetti that night.”
So, they had spaghetti that night.
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Of course, people my age remember 9/11 very clearly.
I was at work at my office in downtown Washington, D.C., and messages started coming over the Internet. The husband of one of my co-workers e-mailed to say that he had been looking out his office window and saw a jet fly into the Pentagon. (I had transferred from a bus to the Metro at the Pentagon less than an hour earlier.) Then the Internet got overloaded, and messages stopped coming through.
Although we are a news office, we didn’t have a TV set (we do now), so I had to run to a nearby Radio Shack to buy a cheap radio so that I could keep track of what was happening. The streets were lined with people trying and failing to get their cellphones to work. People were repeating rumors of fires on the National Mall (not true, as it turned out) and evacuations at the White House, the Capitol, and the Supreme Court. At the Radio Shack, shelves of TV sets were on, all showing the same image of a smoking tower. At that point both buildings were still standing. I was the last customer; after me, they closed the store.
I took the radio back to my office, and everybody worked almost a full day, even though we were only four blocks from the White House and knew we might be in a target zone for another attack. I remember asking my co-workers, “Why today? Is this the anniversary of something?” Then I thought about it and said, “It is now.” I didn’t see the collapse of the buildings until after I got home that night. My house is a couple of miles downwind of the Pentagon, and I could smell the smoke for days.
Both that event and the changes that followed gave me an eerie feeling that we had been shunted into a parallel universe — one of those dark timelines in which the light is dimmer and redder and familiar characters are scuffed up and seedy and have beards and scars and eyepatches. I think a lot of people feel that way. Maybe that explains the current craze for steampunk and Apollopunk and other forms of nostalgia for futures that we were unconsciously counting on but didn’t get. On the flip side, maybe it partly explains MuseBlog, too.
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*Robert said Apollopunk! Somebody else used a word I helped originate!*
Sorry, that’s not very serious. I’m sure that as an adult, your memory is much clearer than ours.
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You bring up an interesting point in your last paragraph. Had I been alive for longer before 9/11, I probably would have been impacted more in that way–a disconnect between “before” and “after”. To an extent, that was the first event that shook the world for me–it had never occurred to me to consider the possibility that the world had bad things in it. I suppose it also came at about the right age–I was seven and, as most children around that age do, was just beginning to become a rational creature. On 9/11, for the first time, badness could exist. Not the kind of badness you feel when you get strawberry ice cream instead of chocolate, but real badness. I imagine part of my day would make a heart-wrenching movie moment: the little boy asking his scared and crying mother, “Mom, what’s a ‘terrorist’?”
As for steampunk and the like, I think it’s a definite possibility. The future–the 21st century–began in a horrific way. The future isn’t supposed to be like that. Thus we look for a different future that adopts comfortable aspects of the known past. Since the past is, well, past, there’s no unknowns, and thus nothing to worry about. So, by combining this comfort with hope for the future, we attempt to create an escape from any real fear. I’d be interested to find parallels in other cultures. Japan could be a possibility, after the atomic bombings. Even the United States after World War II retreated strongly into the clean, suburban idealism of the 1950s. More so, though, I’d point out the immense popularity of Westerns in the ’40s and ’50s. Just like today with steampunk, you have: 1. traumatic, far-reaching event(s) and 2. popular media response of setting modern morality and views into an unrealistic historical setting.
Robert, how might 9/11 partly explain MuseBlog? I’m interested to know.
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Well, I don’t want to get too high-falutin’ about it. But at some level, and to some extent, I think the other GAPAs and I see MuseBlog and Muse as small outposts of resistance in the scuffed-up reddish universe we all wound up in.
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XD XD XD NEED FANFIC NAO.
That’s true on a more serious level of “aah life has become so irrational and crazy we need beacons of ration and sanity and people not being crazy to each other”, too. But nevertheless, NEED FANFIC NAO.
Was the world really saner before 9/11? I can’t remember, so I don’t know; was American life at one point less crazy than it is now? Hasn’t it always been like this?
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You’ve got fanfics: Muse Academy, Bunny Apocalypse, Our Reclusive Gardens, Muse Scouts…
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On the subject of 9/11, I don’t know if anyone’s seen Jon Stewart’s response to it, but it’s been pretty widely said to be a very moving, heartfelt, tearjerking speech. I can’t find a link, but if anyone wants to Google it, please do so! It makes me cry every time I see it.
And anyway, here’s an extended quote from it, which ranks as pretty much my favorite quote of all time:
“The reason I don’t despair is because…
This attack happened. It’s not a dream. But the aftermath of it, the recovery, is a dream realized. And that is Martin Luther King’s dream.
Whatever barriers we put up are gone, even if it’s just momentary. And we’re judging people by not the color of their skin, but the content of their character.
You know, all this talk about “these guys are criminal masterminds, they’ve gotten together and their extraordinary guile and their wit and their skillâ€, it’s a lie. Any fool can blow something up. Any fool can destroy. But to see these guys, these firefighters, these policemen, and people from all over the country, literally, with buckets, rebuilding, that’s extraordinary. And that’s why we’ve already won.
It’s light. It’s democracy. We’ve already won. They can’t shut that down.
They live in chaos. And chaos, it can’t sustain itself. It never could. It’s too easy and it’s too unsatisfying.
The view from my apartment was the World Trade Center. And now it’s gone. They attacked it, this symbol of American ingenuity and strength and labor and imagination and commerce, and it is gone. But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty. The view from the south of Manhattan is now the Statue of Liberty. You can’t beat that.”
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Magnificent.
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