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I was sitting in my room, in my pjs, folding the household laundry and listening to Soundgarden.
The album was Superunknown, and as "Fresh Tendrils" played, I realized its now ten years old.
I guess this is just one of those late night thoughts. This album was the first one I ever bought on my own. I was 12, and I got the tape. I remember my favorite outfit. Blue and green flannel with a white shirt, straightleg jeans, and a pair of brown boots. I was short and skinny, only 5'2" and about 90 lbs.
I remember my family---my mom worked for the phone company, my stepfather did cars on the side, I saw my dad every weekend and his wife was pregnant with her first child.
I was a loner at my elementary school. I spent most of my school days daydreaming when I wasn't supposed and laying out in the field reading books during recess.
My sister wore big stupid purple glasses and dressed horridly. She always got really good grades and all the praise.
I always daydreamed I was in the stories I read, or an actress or a singer. I dreamed about being beautiful and loved when I grew up, and I dreamed about big cities and college road trips and being far away from home when I turned 18. I had big dreams.
I remember this music helping me fly in a way--enlivening me, comforting me, leading me to others like it.
Ten years is really not a long time, I realize.
Now, my mom still works for the phone company, my stepfather renovates our house and does side jobs for friends. I haven't seen my dad in 6 months and before that it had been about a year. My stepmother had a boy named Randy, who will be ten this summer, and she had another boy, Brady, who will be 7 this March.
My sister still gets good grades, and is essentially still the pleaser she was when she was young. I guess I only see it now.
I still love to read (I just read a 400-pg book in 24 hours, between work, sleep and chores, and errands), and I do go to college. I've only been to two cities--Philadelphia and London, and I've never been on a roadtrip. I am about 5'9" now and 140 lbs.
I am loved. I have friends---not to sound Stuart Smalley, but people like me. I should hope they do.I'm not really a loner anymore---people I meet seem to remember me. My family loves me---though I didn't think so when I was young, i see that they do now, even though they can be a little callous. I never moved out at 18--I'm 22 and still at home. I can even go so far as to say I'm attractive, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I want to get into tv or film production work--and no way in hell I can sing or look decent on a screen (I can act, but I haven't in many years).
I still want to go places, and do things, and be far away from home for a little while---but if I haven't done it now--ten years after the fact---when will I do them?
I've obviously changed, my family's changed. Times have changed.
I don't know where I'm going---I guess this is one of those late night things that I'll regret later.
Where were you ten years ago? Do you remember? Do you want to remember? Have things gone the way you wanted them to be?
Who knows? They really haven't gone my way much... (edit for additions)
Ten years ago, I was in 7th grade at West Jefferson Junior High in Conifer, Colorado. While I can identify the year by what songs were popular, such as Blind Melon's "No Rain," Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train," and Ace of Base's "The Sign," I was listening to Garth Brooks religiously. I was in horse club in 4H and was proud to be the only hick in my yuppie school.
Wow. My dreams for the future included being a Rodeo Queen and an artist and being pretty. I was anything but. I had dull brown hair chopped off straight at my chin and big round purple and teal glasses. My favorite outfit was a turtleneck under a tshirt and stretchy stirrup pants. I got my ears pierced on my 12th birthday and wore dangly obnoxious earrings like chili peppers and butterflies.
A year later, I would move to Montana and there finish high school, eventually working all of the cowgirl out of my system. I am on my way to being an artist, but in a slightly more practical application than I had envisioned. And, truth be told, I really enjoy Blind Melon, Soul Asylum, and Ace of Base. Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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10 years ago, I was in my last year of elementary school and about to start high school (no middle schools back then). I already had my career path established; I wrote a paper for my English class which said I was going to become a translator.
Beginnings of high school were difficult. I went to a new town, where I knew no-one, and the only person from my town was a girl I couldn't stand. But she was just as scared, and clung to me, and somehow, we became best friends back then. She lives in the US now, and I haven't seen her for 5 years, but maybe I'll get a chance to meet her in the summer. I made some more friends later on, mainly girls, but was always quite detached from the rest of the group.
I was still a child. I remember I cried once, because my bus didn't come and I had to wait half an hour for another one. Earlier that year,still in primary school, during one class I got a note from a boy. It was written in code. He said if I could decipher it, it was true. Otherwise, it was false. Well, I did manage to decipher the code. It said he loved me. I burst out laughing - which probably ruined my chances of dating him, as he turned red and dropped the subject. He is a priest now. Posts: 5700 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Not to be a downer, but ten years ago this month was when I found out my father had terminal cancer. I was in Russia at the time, and I'm not sure if he was in the hospital by the time I got home or shortly thereafter. He died the first week of April.
I was 15, a freshman in high school. That summer was my first of three at church music camp. Two guys I met there are still my best friends in the world, two people I know will always be there for me even if my family isn't.
I don't really remember much else.
Posts: 1090 | Registered: Oct 2003
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10 years ago this week saw me in my second semester of my freshman year of high school. I was rehearsing a musical, in early morning seminary and already bored with high school. High school was good to me though. I had a circle of fun and (for the most part) decent friends that accepted me for me and didn't expect much else. We all met each other in biology, or in Mr. Perkins' 9th grade honors english and stuck together for the next four years.
I also still had my best friend from junior high...and the great thing is, I still have her. We're both 25 years old and we're better friends than we ever have been.
I can't believe how fast 10 years go, but I also can't believe how much can be crammed into them.
Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
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Ten years ago, I was 12 too. I now remember this time as an insouciant time, but I guess this is because what I went through when my mother had a cancer and died from it (fiazco, if you're a downer me too ). I was lonely at school, not much friends (only one called Mary, and now I haven't seen her for four years...). I can't remember if it was this year or the next one I began English and was so oh so found of my English teacher (and now you know why I'm here today ), but I remember I would rather have died than be seen in a dress. I dreamed a lot about what would be my life. I wanted to work in a library or to breed donkeys (at last I did one, guess which !) and to be VERY beautiful, but single and with no child (at this age I didn't believe in Prince Charmant. As a matter of fact I only started to believe when I met him, three years ago). My father was working in children juridic protection, and my mother was staying at home. My two sisters were studying. Now they are adult, married, one with a child and the other expecting for one in a few weeks. And here I am, getting married in a few month, loved by and loving a wonderful man and some great friends, and far more open to the others, mostly thank to my choral group. My father is progresivly getting retired (means he'll work only half time at the start of june.) . And my mother is dead, but I guess everything can't be all pink with little hearts... I still have a great life, and I wouldn't exchange it with one of my dreams of 12-years-old, even for a million dollars. Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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1994, for me, was the year I first fell in love. I was a freshman in high school, and she was a sophomore. I was second-chair trumpet, she was second chair flute.
We sat next to each other on bus trips to basketball games and competitions. We always shared a pair of headphones and listened to Pearl Jam's Vitalogy. I was shy, and didn't have the courage to ask her out until almost five years later. And I didn't get over her for three more after that.
In 1994, I first got diagnosed with ADD--after the third straight day in which I'd been sent to the principal for sticking paper clips in the electrical sockets and blowing the breaker for the Earth Science room. I crumpled up the note to my mom and talked her out of getting me Ritalin a week later when they called to follow up.
Years later I find that red wine has the same effect on my attention span as Ritalin would, and it tastes better. If you ever read a long, coherent post of mine here at Hatrack, you can bet I'd written it with warm cheeks.
1994 was also the year I stopped wanting to be an engineer. Fresh off a 5th place finish in the state at the MathCounts competition, I was burnt out. I feel in and out of love with Shakespeare that year, but my love of the written word stuck around.
Unfortunately, I didn't go about it in the best way. I wrote funny short stories--just a few paragraphs--and sent them around the room when my teachers weren't looking for people to add on to. I parodied Ben Franklin's "13 Virtues" list and got detention. I got my column in the school paper yanked after the first issue for using the term "huge arse". I still maintain that the HomeEc teacher should've curbed her fondness for blueberry muffins.
Fortunately, that love of writing spawned no specific goals, so I really have no way of gauging how far behind I am right about now. Whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always answered "Older, happier, and smarter." They thought I was being a smart-ass.
So, here I sit 10 years later. Older, wiser, and happier. I still have no goals for(and barely a concept of) the future, but I have no worries about it, either. If, in 2014, I'm older, smarter, and happier, I think I'll be right where I want to be.
Posts: 5264 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Ten years ago huh? I was in second semester of my first senior year in college (I liked it so much I decided to have another 1 and a half). I was living in an apartment that occupied the top two floors of a once opulent, now decaying (well, then decaying--I haven't been back, but I assume it still is) mansion of a house in the college slum neighborhood just off campus, with 4 or 5 roommates. I divided my time between the ongoing house spades tournament, college (this was the semester that I spent 8 hours a day relearning Attic Greek), experimenting with unusual sleep schedules, working at a local fast food place, working in the university's Pharmaceutical Chemistry department, playing games on my Amiga, hanging out with a fairly huge family of friends that I'd constructed around myself, reading massive amounts of SF, and becoming involved with a woman who, in retrospect, I should have realized was pretty much insane. It was a pretty good time for me.
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Ten years ago, I was a junior at CWRU. I was complaining that alternative music had gone mainstream, and was heavily into online MUDs and MUSHes. I was grooving on NIN's Downward Spiral, and finally managed, with "Cornflake Girl," to convince the rest of my friends that Tori Amos was cool. I liked the Afghan Whigs, but felt guilty about it, and had just discovered Lorena McKennit and -- years late -- the Pogues. I liked The Offspring, but thought they were better when they stuck to gothic metal than when they veered into humorous So-Cal punk. I hated Soundgarden, but I'm not sure why.
I LOATHED Aphex Twin, and figured electronica -- especially when the Japanese got into it -- would be the end of modern music. I hoped Marilyn Manson would amount to something, thought the Cranberries and Pearl Jam were starting to decline, and my dream concert featured Hole, Veruca Salt, Liz Phair, Ani DiFranco, Sarah McLachlan, and Sleater-Kinney. I thought the Dave Matthews Band had a good fiddler and clever lyrics, and I recall having them on rotation with Sunny Day Real Estate and Phish, for some reason.
I got a signed playlist from REM's "Monster" show in Chicago, just by asking, and got kissed backstage by both girls in Veruca Salt.
1994 was really the last year music was good. It was certainly the last year I was cool, since my whole life took a nosedive that fall and took almost five years to recover.
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Ten years ago I was 15. Was just talking with someone about this last night. I was a hormonal teenage female, and my mother was menopausing. Recipe for disaster. At home I was pretty miserable. The most famous fight of that year was known as "The Kool-Aid Incident" in which we were in the car and arguing, and my mother took a corner at high speed and a large cup of red kool-aid in the cup holder toppled over in slow motion cartoon fashion ending up all over me.
At school I actually found some really nice friends (or they found me) who are still friends with me today.
That summer was a decent summer, I stayed mostly out of the house lifguarding, and was actually exposed to a lot of popular culture. I was much quieter there because I knew that I didn't know anything about it, and should just keep my mouth shut for the most part so I didn't look stupid. The other teenagers I lifeguarded with, began to grudgingly respect me in spite of my oddities.
But overall it was one of the downer years of my life. The next year was a slight improvement, but things really didn't get much better until I left for college.
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We had a one year old baby and we lived in a two bedroom house and had a pickup truck. Wes took the pickup to work (he was not on the fire department yet, he's been there nine years). I carpooled to work with my Mom and every cent we had went to bills and groceries.
My dream was to build a big, new house. Have more children, maybe one more maybe two more. Be able to afford two cars in our family! Be able to stay home with my kids.
I've done it all, and then some. Instead of one or two more I had three more. We built that house five years ago. We have three vehicles in the family, though one of them is just a work truck. And I'm home.
I guess we've done pretty well in 10 years.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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10 years ago I got into Nirvana for the first time and started to love Rock and Roll. It changed my life. I started to question my religion. My grandmother was still alive. Books were shaping and changing me. Like Rumi and the Seventh Son. And the music was divine. Pearl Jam and Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots. Nine Inch Nails scared me. But later... that would change. I'm nowhere near getting to my goals.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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10 years ago, I had just turned 15, and I was half way through my freshman year of high school. I was still living Schenectady, New York, where I grew up, so although I had moved frequently, I had never had to change school districts more than once.
The boy that I had lived next door to 10 years before that moved back into town. We hung out a lot, and reminisced about the time he asked me to marry him, and how cute he was in his little tux with the ring he'd found on an airplane and me in my nightgown at the front door glaring at him for having woken me up.
I was a pretty angry person that year. I wore a lot of black, and always had my hair pulled up into a severe ponytail. I had just come away from the 80's hair (remember the rooster bangs? yeah I did that), and my parents had split up the year before, and right before the school year started I found out that my mother's husband, who had raised me and I'd grown up believing I was related to, was not my biological father after all.
I got my first taste of sour milk sitting on the stage in front of the cafeteria. I don't know why I remember that moment, but it's a memory that always sticks in my head.
I had my first boyfriend that year. It was my little teenage rebellion. My mother told me I wasn't allowed to date until I was 16, so that I might not have a baby at 17 like she did (hello me!), so I dated at 15 just to spite her. We broke up two weeks later after he hit on my best friend, giving her a note with all kinds of sexual suggestions in them. We're on speaking terms last I saw him, though he still denies ever hitting on her.
I was in Choir, and my director was Mrs. Wagner. It was in high school that I finally got away from singing with tapes >_< and got into actually singing, and learning how to sing. I moved from being a Soprano in middle school to being an Alto, sometime Soprano2 in high school. Choir was my escape from the anger and the pain I was feeling. The choir room and the library were my happy places.
Will Vollor. I had such a crush on this boy. End of my freshman year, I told my best friend, and she told him. He came to me, and asked me if I really did have a crush on him, and I adamantly denied it. Which is a good thing, because he then showed me a picture of his girlfriend from downstate. *sigh*
I was a smart girl, as the teachers kept telling me, and I took AP classes to make them happy, though I was miserable in high school. I had two or three friends, but that was about it. I was very shy, barely speaking at all, even in classes where I knew the answer because kids would tease me for being smarter. The glasses didn't help much either, with the thick red plastic frames.
I wanted to be a teacher, but not of middle school. I wanted to write and to sing and I wanted to build this fantastic house with my step sister. We drew plans for it even, including a moat outside and suits of armor in the main hall. We each had our own tower as our personal space. She was my 'real' best friend, though I didn't think of her as such, because we lived so far away from each other. We were going to be alone, two old biddies and our cats, living together.
Now, I finally have some cats, 2 to be exact. My step sister is still my best friend, and I would go to the ends of the earth for her.
We still talk about building that house someday, too.
Will Vollor moved 'back home', and I moved down to Virginia.
I've dropped out of college, or flunked out rather, but I only think of it as a failure gradeswise. I made some of the best friends and progressed so far at being less shy than I am, that I think it was still a learning experience, just not the kind you get graded on.
I've since learned that life isn't all about what you learn from a book. My mother's comment that I was "academically smart, common sense stupid" now makes sense to me. I still learn quickly, and I do occasionally borrow my sister's college text books for fun, I find most of what I learn comes from just hanging out with other people.
I'm not a teacher yet, though I'd still like to be. As soon as I get a chance, I'm giong back to school, but I'm doing it *right* this time.
I'm known for being a happy person now. I've found a religion that fits my beliefs (Wicca, if you must know) and I've learned how to change myself to be what I want to be, and not just sit back and let myself become what everyone else wants me to be.
I've fulfilled my mother's dreams (graduate high school, don't get pregnant young, and be happy), and now I'm going to fulfill mine.
I wear lots of pink now, and blue, and sparkly things. I have a fondness for the gaudy, huge rings and dangling earrings that light up, that kind of thing.
I've learned that the thing I believe in above all else is love. Not simply the man-woman love (or whatever your sexual preference is), but just sharing love with any other warm being. It can be friendly love, familial love, or you can even love your cat! As long as you have someone in your life to love, you're okay. I'm blessed with many warm beings to love, and the list grows longer everyday.
Ten years ago I was 14. I was a freshman in high school. I didn't enjoy high school much at that point. I got beat up a lot. I was unhappy most of the time. I didn't have very many friends, and the ones I did have I didn't really treat all that well. I didn't like myself very much.
Ten years ago was right about when I started really listening to music. Granted, much of the music I listened to wasn't brand spankin' new, but, then, I've always been a little behind on most music. I started my music collection. I listened to a lot of Metallica and other metal groups. Some "alternative" stuff: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains. I bought Green Day's Dookie just because my brother hated the song "Longview." I started being interested in the 60's, listening to the Beatles and the Doors.
The summer before the school year started I became close again with a friend from elementary school, with whom I've since fallen out of touch. He came back from his dad's gold mine up in Humboldt county with a bag of weed; I smoked it for the first time in the woods across the river from my house. He got me into BBSs, prompting me to get the first computer that was all my own: a 386DX with 8 megs of RAM. I started my first BBS. I got my first girlfriend, sort of.
Ten years ago in April was when I first went on my school's Desert Trip, and so it was the first step toward becoming a more well-adjusted person. I started growing my hair out, although it wasn't until about a year later when it was really long. I smoked my first cigarette. I had my first deep philosophical conversation. I started going out on the weekends without my parents. I learned the bus schedule.
Ten years ago I wanted to be some sort of scientist. I think. I didn't really know what I wanted to do, just that science was my best class and I enjoyed it. But I don't think I had any long term goals. I think I had already given up on being cool. I wanted to have more friends. I wanted to have a girlfriend. I wanted to be happy, sometimes, but more often I really wallowed in my depression. For a while I wanted to be dead, but fortunately that passed.
I think ten years ago was when I really started becoming my adult self. Things seem to have worked out OK so far. Being the nostalgic sort that I am, I tend to look back on that part of my life as magical in some way. I wonder what this time will look like in ten years.
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003
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10 years ago I was serving an LDS mission in Belgium. I was in Charleroi then, serving with Elder Bray. We were in the process of getting a new apartment in Couillet, across the river from our old apartment and right in the middle of our area, which was a good thing, since it cut down our travel time every day. That New Year's, all six of us missionaries in Charleroi met in the Cafe Americain (I think that's what the name was), a hip spot in downtown Charleroi. There was a lifesize Marilyn Monroe standing on a vent and holding her skirt down. Of course I got a picture of me kissing her cheek--how could I resist?
I pretty much missed any significant cultural events in the U.S. during '93-'95. When I got back home, I had two years' worth of music and movies to catch up on.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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Ten years ago I was... *cough*... seven, going on eight. This was probably one of those winters where our thick woollen winter tights, thin white shirts, purple uniform sweaters and thin long coats would be cut right through by the wet and the wind. Ah, English playgrounds, the unprotected winter sea of wet concrete.
I had my favourite teacher of Elementry school, Mrs Hawkes. She taught us about the ancient Egyptians by showing us how to haul great rocks around on plastic rollers. We grew carrots, but they took too long to grow, so on the last day of school I helped to dig up the baby carrots and took some of them home.
This was also the year I wrote my first story. It was called Inside Island, and was set on an Island inside a great glass dome.
All my other memories are confused, and could belong to any year.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Ten years ago I had just found out I got a full scholarship to college, against all odds and reason.
Lawrence Atwood (aka The Comet) asked me out for the first time to the Sweetheart Dance. He asked me out by making a tape of Tom Lehrer and Wierd Al music, and when we went to the dance, I decided I needed contacts so I could dance closer to him.
I went out with him once every six months for the next five years. Up until the last couple years, he was the only guy to break my heart. The rest of the time, I broke it perfectly well with my own decisions.
I remade friends with a girl I'd known since kidnergarten, and we started making the rounds of parties and dances.
Ten years ago, my first, last, and only LD tournament ended with me deciding I was never going to pour my heart into something that the other participants saw as only a game. I thought that by combining minds and sifting out details, we could come to a rational conclusion about a pressing issue. I lost my final round to a student who was playing only to win.
Ten years ago, I felt weary of the world I knew and was convinced there was a better one somewhere else. I was actually right.
[ January 09, 2004, 04:05 PM: Message edited by: Javert Hugo ]
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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Ten years ago I was 7 years old and in the first grade. I had been reading longer and longer books more and more frequently even then. I don't remember much, really. Just... heh, I was happy then. I, ever the nature-lover, ran around outside with the friends I had made the year before (some of whom I still talk with even now). I remember that I loved English even then and that a loathing for math hadn't yet come to me. I remember being an angel in our Christmas play and... Just really the last truly happy memories I have of growing up.
The next 18 months or so were when things really started to deteriorate to the point that, around this time in my 3rd grade year, I nearly committed suicide. I had began to realize how dysfunctional my parents' marriage was and I was ostracized (sp?) in school and... To this day, I still don't know why there was such a sudden change as far as friends go. I asked the others one day a few years ago why they seemed to hate me so much. None of them knew. For 8 years between then and our last year together they ignored and teased me and went out of their ways to be mean and they didn't even know why . ...Anyhow...
Ten years ago I thought boys were disgusting and that I'd never get married. I didn't want to ever have children and I thought for sure that I wanted to be a veterinarian. Now I'd like to go into teaching or counseling after college. I'm engaged and have an amazing group of friends and two of the best friends anyone could ever hope for. It's been an interesting ten years, but I'm proud of how far I've come since then and am hopeful for the future.
I think Frisco said it perfectly: "If, in 2014, I'm older, smarter, and happier, I think I'll be right where I want to be."
Posts: 1548 | Registered: Aug 2002
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Ten years ago I was working for a church-related agency that worked with people in prison and their families. Most of my unsolicited mail at work (mistakenly) came with “Rev.” in front of my name, and I was starting to wonder if I might like to work toward actually acquiring that title. I had recently broken up with the last guy I’ve dated, who was still pretty much in love with his ex-wife. I lived in a really yucky basement apartment in an old house that has since been torn down. (I wonder if they ever found the last egg from my friend’s indoor Easter egg hunt when they tore it down. We never did find it, and I can’t figure out why it never started to stink.) About twice a year the inappropriate items that the upstairs tenants flushed down their toilet would build up enough to block the drains, and I’d have to listen to the lecture from the Roto-Rooter guy while he cleared it. Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Ten years ago, I had started Kindergarten and was getting a baby brother.
My mother had kept me home 'til I was six so she didn't have to deal with my new baby sister and my school. And then she got pregnant again, and thought keeping me home 'til I was seven would be overkill. I was attending Washington Elemenatry School. Coincidentally, my li'l brother and sister are now attending that school, but now it's "Washington Traditional Elementary School".
My dad was also practically bed-ridden due to a disc...um...not fracture, but shatter. I forgot what you call that. And, as stated, my mom was pregnant and already had a newborn to take care of. So it was "Hello foodstamps!"
I remember that was also the year that I bought my first thing at a checkout by myself (with a dollar that I earned). It was at Safeway, and I bought a Snickers.
We lived next to a fire station in an average-sized trailer. And I remember that our lawn was ideal for hide-and-go seek, and that one of our neighbors shot our cat (I don't remember the cat's name, but I'm pretty sure she was a female).
I wasn't really interested in reading because back then, reading=schoolwork, or it was just another thing my parents did in bed.
I wasn't really too interested in our black-and-white TV either, except to watch Funniest Home Videos with the family. I remember asking my mom why the Full House guy was on two shows. She told me he was an 'actor' and what that meant, and I told her that he was 'acting' the same way on both shows. I was firmly convinced that he should have just stuck with AFV, because Full House was boring. In retrospect, I think I should have been more convinced that he should just drop dead because they both suck. But what can I say? At five, airplanes and dogs and umbrellas and the like hitting numerous amounts of butts was hilarious.
I had no musical tastes other than "not country".
I was more of an outdoor kid, except for my bike. My mom tried to teach me, but I was terrified of it. I didn't actually learn how to ride one 'til I was ten. (I don't much care for the current embarassed smilie, so pretend a better one is here).
But, yeah, I've changed, as has my world. I see things about 2' 7" and 100 pounds more differently. Looking back, that year really sucked, but other than my dad not being able to play with me as much as before, I didn't realize it.
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Ten years ago, I suppose I was in Third grade... But ten years and a few months ago when I was in second grade was when I met my best friend in the world.
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10 years ago I was 8. And being 8, I was... ::thinks:: in some sort of grade. 2nd? 3rd? I think it was 3rd.
When I was 8, our elementry school did one of those time capsul things. You know, write a note, and bury it in the ground. I'm pretty sure that if future generations had time traveling capabilities, they would have time traveled back and smacked me upside the head.
When I was 8, it was 1994, and our family went to Niagra Falls. I remember this because I had a shirt that said 1994 - Niagra Falls on it. People kept honking their horns in Canada, and I think it was because they won some big huge game or something. My sister (5 years old at the time) got lost at Niagra Falls. And by some twist of fate, she found her way back and I've been stuck with her ever since.
Posts: 9754 | Registered: Jul 2002
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I have a for real talk I delivered in Church 10 years ago. Let me see if I can find it. I was 23.5. I don't know if that makes me the oldest in this thread so far.
We had just bought our first house. We thought we would trade up in a couple of years (we just moved from it in August 03). I had resumed my college studies after my husband got out of the military. I took a student counseling center seminar on self discovery. It didn't help. I stayed in Linguistics. I would consider Law School later that year.
We had argued over whether to have another baby (our first had died 12/92) and my husband wanted to wait another year. It would be over two and a half more years, but I'm glad it finally happened.
We were in Amway and were sure that if a lot of the desperate hicks we saw getting rich could do it, surely we could. Later we got a notice of a class action suit against the business leaders for racketeering.
I weighed about 20 pounds less then, and thought I was fat. Edit: I wanted to add that I've always felt like I lost a few years in there, because a lot of my friends have kids older than mine, or else much much younger. All my church friends have older kids, while my clique from high school just have babies.
That was fourth/fifth grade. I was obsessed with Egypt, Disney, Star Wars, Oldies, and Indiana Jones. My favorite books were Treasure Island, A Wind in the Door, and Huckleberry Finn. I was also for the first time allowed to wear dangly earrings. Every spare moment I had I spent with my nose in a book. I also played every sport available - basketball, soccer, swimming at the Y, golf, track, and softball.
I wasn't really part of any group. I was the artist of the class, as well as the fastest sprinter (yay 50 yard dash) and tallest kid. My best friends were Tim, Josh, and Adam. Recess was a great time, because I would spend it either playing kickball on the tar with the cool kids, playing football in the side yard with the jocks, compare house plans (yes, house plans ) and drawings with the artists by the door, watch the hormonal kids play kissing in the side woods, play dodgeball on the bench with the ruffians, see how far we could get off the property without the aids noticing deep in the woods with the troublemakers (sometimes we even got past the bridge!), frolick on the playground equipment with the younger kids, and play planet-exploration with the nerds. Phew!
I remember also taking a whole bunch of those Johns Hopkins talent test thinggys, but 1994 was also the year of my first grade that *wasn't* an A...it was a C. In Handwriting . It was also the first time I did and got a First Place in the Junior Duck Stamp competition.
It was also the year of my first boyfriend. Though, truth be told, I wasn't exactly sure what the point of a boyfriend was. He was one of the "cool kids" and his attention baffled me... no matter how many people had told me then I should be a model, I never believed that I was pretty, but I guess I was. Anyway, after he got in a fight with his best friend, he had asked me out. It was only in my junior year of high school that I learned that the fight was over me We talked on the phone and he got me presents and kissed me on the cheek. We walked around town and went to his mother's farm to ride horses and look at the view from the hayloft in the barn and to eat his mother's homemade spaghetti and meatballs. We lasted two years (which I think is impressive) and only broke up because in sixth grade everyone was pressuring us to kiss - like, the gross icky slobbery kind everyone had taken to doing - and we felt that was just embarrassing, so we made the smooth transition to Just Friends.
And I'm still the same person, I don't think I've changed a bit, besides trying to force myself not to be shy. I wanted to be an artist and an architect, and thats what I'm going to be. Life is good.
posted
Ten years ago I was just about to graduate from high school. I was disappointed not to be valedictorian, but I had been chosen as "Most Studious". (My best friend had gotten "Most likely to succeed" and I was jealous. Turned out they were right not to give it to me. )
I had no idea what the internet was like, having never been online.
I knew I was going to college, on my National Merit Scholarship, and I think I had picked out Harding. If anyone here thinks I'm closed-minded, or a hardliner, they should've known me then. I was so opinionated then I made OSC look liberal.
I expected that in four years I would be angling for a research position. So much for that.
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Ten years ago I was doing contract programming freelance, and learning how not to have a business (by ignoring the financial aspects as much as possible and focusing only on the technical part). My best friend and I were hanging out in coffee shops a lot, and bookstores, outdoor all night cheap sandwich shops, and just at my apartment. We were listening to all kinds of stuff old and current like They Might Be Giants, early Pretenders, Violent Femmes, the Dead Milkmen, the Connells, The Cure, and I can't remember who all else.
Counting Crows and the Wallflowers came in around about that time, didn't they? Or was it maybe the next year? Some time around in there I started loving the Smashing Pumpkins, and then Beck, but I think he was later, whenever it was that Odelay came out. It was a good musical time for me, though. I was playing guitar a lot then, and singing, and finding lots and lots of music I loved.
I had done my Electrical Engineering degree, but still worked as a programmer, and didn't get my first real engineering job until late in 1994. I wasn't a hatracker yet, of course, and didn't do the BBS thing much, though I had a CompuCharge account that I logged on to for tech stuff. There was a local BBS in Birmingham called The Matrix that I sometimes did log on to, (with my 1200 baud modem), but I didn't get sucked in to the online world until maybe some time in 1995 or 1996, I guess.
It's weird that I can't remember at all what books I was reading then. Books don't seem connected to the time I first read them the way music does to the time I first heard it. I know I had pretty much gone through all the Russians when I was at uni, so it wasn't them. Maybe that was when I read Trollope and Fielding and Jane Austen for the first time? I really can't remember for sure. Oh, and Henry James! It's starting to come back to me. I got very angry at him some time around then, and wanted to kill him, and was frustrated that he was already dead.
[ January 10, 2004, 12:22 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
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posted
1994 was my last year living in Maryland. I was a class senator in fifth grade, along with a boy named Daren Gordon (don't ask why I remember his name). I didn't really do much, and I'm not sure how I ended up on the student council, but there you have it. I also won the annual Irish jig contest.
I became really close to my best friend, Abby Shearin, that year. I was also friends with a few other girls. I started middle school in sixth grade, and Abby was writing a book and I was illustrating it over lunch break. I loved my math teacher, and some girls in my class decided my English teacher looked like a frog. My social studies teacher was bald, and it was in his class that I cheated for the first and last time in my life. I felt terrible about it for a long time afterward.
In 1994, I learned that my family would be moving to Colorado. I think I was excited, since we'd be a lot closer to family, but I was also really sad to leave my friends. I think 1994 was one of the happiest years of my life so far, or it was until I came to college. The rest of junior high and highschool were really hard. But I liked being ten and eleven. I played a lot of Barbies, making up elaborate plots for them and laughing until I cried with Abby and my sister Karen. I was also babysitting my younger brothers and sisters once in a while, which made me feel grown up.
posted
Sorry to take another turn, but MF's 1st boyfriend story reminded me of when I was a kid, in fifth grade (so 1980-81). I sat with two boys, P who was quiet and studious, and M who was more gregarious. We were in a gifted program. I had a habit of tapping my pencil on my chin or on the top of my head. M drew a picture of me tapping a crowbar on my head, and P got really mad at him. The rumor after that was that P had a crush on me. Though the most shocking part of the incident was that my name got written on the board. Back then, you could keep kids in line with a warning of writing their name on the board. 4 checks by it and you went to the principal's office.
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posted
Maybe we could consider it as a landmark for a lot of persons ? Hum ? (looks at moderator with Bambi eyes)
Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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Goshness, I was just roaming about hatrack for a moment and found this thread and it got me to thinking, what on earth was I doing ten years ago?
Well ten years ago I would have been ten years old in elementary school and still getting to love Minnesota.
I was very short and small back then with rather large and nerdy glasses ::smiles:: I remember I didn't have many friends, but the ones that I have from back then are all still my friends then. I was in love with just about anything that had words on paper, and then some.
I remember having two or three 286 computers taken apart and half way reassemebeled laying on my desk. I remember coding in Basic back then and thinking I was ( very cool) for it. I remember logging on to various BBS ( bulletin board services) and posting/playing the various online games they had. I was so enthralled by everything electrical and written that I was for sure thats it would be a part of my life somehow. So while I did eventually start my own company and make a rather lot of money when I was 16-18 I ended up joining the military ( smart business decision or not) Oh and in case you all don't know ( I haven't really adverised the fact) I did end up reenlisting for 4 years in Germany so I should be making Sergeant here in a little bit. ::Shrugs shoulders::
I remember getting into dozens and dozens of fights. I blame being amazingly nerdy but also just a bit too prideful for my own good at such a young age. It was a lot of fun though, but I got a bit bruised on more than one occasion.
My parents were still together ten years ago, which is a good thing, and they were even happy together then too. I remember wanting to be a priest and one day becoming a cardinal or even the first American pope. ( so I had a lot of odd various dreams)
I remember my first crush , Sarah Greniger, and how I very much did not have a chance with the skinny little blonde haired blue eyed girl. ( this however ended up giving me the bad habit of seeking out Blonde haired blue eyed girl until of course my rather permanent current choice Morgan who is red haired and blue eyes. 50/50 isn't hat bad ::Smiles::
Mostly good things, but life now is a lot better. It feels as if life has expanded a thousand fold, that through every new little discovery in my life the bubble around my universe has expanded. So its been a rather good, yet at times hard, ten years. But who can complain since it looks like I'll have another ten.
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Could we do a five-year one, too? Cuz I can't remember ten years ago very well, but five years I can...
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posted
Oh, I just realized. '94 was also the year one of my family's friends commited suicide. She was a schizophrenic/mpd.
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quote:While I can identify the year by what songs were popular, such as Blind Melon's "No Rain," Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train," and Ace of Base's "The Sign,"
Holy crap! I love all those songs BECAUSE I heard them all at such a young age (12). Wow. I'm not the only one! ...I need to get those CDs.
quote:the year of my first grade that *wasn't* an A...it was a C
That's okay. MY first non-A grade was in third grade (1989) and it was D. In handwriting. In college, the curse remains. As a senior, a professor I'd had five times for my English major courses, told me that if I had better handwriting, I'd have gotten A's in all her courses instead of B's and B+'s. And I said, "And you tell me NOW?!"
So me. Ten years ago I was fourteen, so I was a freshman in high school at North Hall High School in Gainesville, Georgia. My best friends were Leanne, Evan, and Chris. I remember trying out for the basketball team and not making it. I was dating Evan. o_O I don't actually remember much, other than I was mostly sad and frustrated and hated being at home. But most of you know that.
I remember thinking that sixteen was forever away, and that I'd never live till my twenties. I wanted to be a doctor at the time and go to the Naval Academy.
Imagine my surprise now that I'm 24, a social worker, and have a problem with authority.
Life really never turns out in any way you'd expect.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Ten years ago I was nine and, at pretty much any particular point in time, was getting into trouble. I remember that my counselor at one point in time actually referred to me as a "little mad savage," which I tactfully chose to recieve as a compliment. I got into a lot of fights back then, was practicing the viola constantly, and listening to Bach. At the time I wanted to be a writer, and I'm still playing with the idea. My dreams and ambitions were not very well defined, so it's been a lot easier to fulfill them.
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I thought someone would just be like "shut up, Starla," but I am amazed at how beautiful this is...
I took the time to read everybody's and most of you brought back memories I had forgotten because I had the same or a similar experience.
I remember just about every band mentioned in this thread just coming out or getting big (Except the Wallflowers was either late 95 or early 96). I loved just about every song on MTV's top 20 (US3, Alice in Chains, Ace of Base, Oueen Latifah, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, etc). I am still in the process of getting most of the albums I liked then (I have bought Candlebox, Jeff Buckley's "Grace" in the last year, and will hopefully obatain Pearl Jam's Vitalogy and Live's Throwing Copper).
I remember I got inconsistent at best grades--and remember having the feeling that my stepmother would have a boy who would steal the attention from me (Which is what happened, but I never really got much to begin with).
It was also an incredibly bad winter in New Jersey---with wretched ice storms and snow and freezing temperatures. I started hiking the in park then, where there was an old munitions factory ruins from WWI that was filled up with water that was solid ice. We used to slide on it. It was a beautiful place to go---like a glittery ice castle.
I was unhappy though. I had been diagnosed with a ADHD and an anxiety disorder (which my mom refused to have me medicated, thank goodness, because she figured I would grow out of it). In retrospect, I see I didn't get along with my stepfather, and he had a tendency to be really mean, though I didn't see that because I thought everybody's parents were like that. March of that year I was discharge out of the child-study program that I had been in since I was 8. They put me in the program because I never wanted to do classwork and I would cry for no reason.
A week or two after I was discharged, another girl joked about how she was my "keeper" in second grade, by decree of the teacher, who also would make fun of me, or have other students make fun of me in class. I had completely forgotten this until she joked about it--I probably blocked it out. But my behavior after 2nd grade was now explained when the counselors and psychologists couldn't figure it out. I remembered how she would make me write hundreds of sentences during lunch for minor infractions and write numbers into the thousands into little graphing paper squares. How she would make the other kids stand up and point at me and laugh whenever I made a mistake.
Granted, that happend during the 1988-89 school year, but I spent the next 5 years in counseling because of it.
In 1994, I had just come out of a 2 year period of self-mutilation. I never cut myself bad enough to scar, but I still did. I think this stems from me having no friends and my relationship with my stepfather.
And, arg, I forgot about glasses. I had these huge wire frames that I had gotten the year before (my first pair) and I had them until 1998. I hated them with a passion.
I got beat up a lot. I didn't realize it then, but now I see that I was afraid to fight back because I was afraid I would either hurt someone, or not be able to--if that makes any sense to anyone.
1994 was the beginning of adolescence for me. Someone told me once that technically, adolescence lasts ten years.
I'm pretty sure I am done with adolescence.
I apologize for my second turn---I'm awake and I felt like I needed to share more and explain more.
Thank you all so much for sharing your memories Posts: 463 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I'm going to take another turn. I was so wrapped up in it being ten years since my father died that I totally forgot about the amazing trip to Russia, and I even mentioned it in my post. It was a two-week mission trip that involved handing out school supplies to kids. Operation Carelift through Josh McDowell Ministries if anyone is familiar with that. I'm not sure exactly what my mom's motivation was in going, but she knew better than to go without me, and "I've never been the same." I don't know how to better describe my experience without totally rambling, but I've since been back once, and I would go again in a heartbeat. I still want to learn how to speak Russian in case I do get to go back.
Also, the first of my nieces and nephews was born in 1994.
Some of you talked about where you are today and where you imagine yourself ten years from now. For me, the only thing that matters now is that I am a different person than I was ten years ago. Not that I was bad, but I have matured. I have grown. I have progressed. As far as the future, I'm still trying to figure out where I fit in The Big Picture. Until that is more clear, I try to avoid setting goals that I'll probably never achieve. For now, I'm just taking it one day at a time.
Posts: 1090 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I like Frisco's "wiser, happier, older" personally.
I learned a long time ago that guidelines and specifics can be constraining and when things don't work out the way you want them to---it's all that more disappointing.
So, I stick to the KISS--Keep It Simple, Stupid---and the "If you're not drowning, go with the flow."
Though I am sure there will be some things in life I will just want to swim after, but in general---
Posts: 463 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Ten years ago I was 4, in preschool. I had wispy blonde hair and a pet snake that escaped at school when I brought him for show-and-tell. My teacher panicked, but I cried because I'd lost my beloved pet. I wanted to be a veterinarian, and I was madly in love with a boy who was in kindergarten. Whenever I saw him I would freeze and stare, apparently forgetting how to talk. I was reading those "Little Miss ____" books and composing stories about witches (of which I was frightened) and reptiles (which I loved).
Posts: 60 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
Wow. What a great thread!!! My responses to it are so different than they were the first time around, although I still don't know any of the music mentioned.
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In college, the curse remains. As a senior, a professor I'd had five times for my English major courses, told me that if I had better handwriting, I'd have gotten A's in all her courses instead of B's and B+'s. And I said, "And you tell me NOW?!"
