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Flashback Monday OT: 1991

I am declaring Mondays to be Time Machine Open Threads. My thought is that I’ll post a little something about where I was and what I was doing in a particular year, and add some pop culture tidbits. Feel free to play along in the comments, or you know, just use the open thread however you’d like.

Note from Ophelia: The open thread is starting early tonight! Everyone in the pool!

1991

I’m starting with 1991 because it was the year I graduated from high school and my 20-year reunion is next month. So in June 1991, I had just graduated from high school, and I was having a blast being a resident camp counselor at a Girl Scout Camp. I had The Cure in my tape deck, and drove around in a 1986 Dodge Lancer. I was dying to go to college already (whereupon I would meet Selena within about my first two hours on campus– I found her because we had the same Cure T-shirt. True Story). That summer, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves took the theaters by storm, and while I tried not to like it, it was really had to avoid. I admit, it eventually grew on me.

For more fun from 1991, including what not to wear, check out this video full of clips of the #1 hits from that year: http://youtu.be/w1MxqnUFRXU

What were you doing in 1991??

 

 

43 replies on “Flashback Monday OT: 1991”

1991. Waiting to be a senior in high school. Working my summer job at the mall in a clothing store. Wearing skinny acid washed jeans, little ankle boots and sometime leggings with a long top. I think that the reason I am so resistant now, in my late thirties, to wearing skinny jeans and leggings, is that I am afraid it will cause some time-warp and I will be forced to re-live the my senior year of high school.

I turned 30 yesterday! No big party, mostly because i hate big parties but also because we are in a new city. It was really nice. My favorite champagne, a nice present from Mr. Blue, dinner at a little bistro down the street.

I don’t have many regrets for my 20s, so I’m looking forward to more fun this decade.

Like you, I graduated high school that year and had my first “real” (as in non-babysitting job). I was working as a hostess at a family-style restaurant. Hostess, not waitress — it was a lot of standing around or greeting/seating customers. What I learned that summer? I should never work in the food service industry: I dropped more than one sheet-cake, almost threw out the house dressing because I thought it was slop water, didn’t have the upper body strength to lift the giant buckets of ice tea we made in the morning, and generally lacked the people skills required to greet and seat. Fun year.

In 1991, I was in kindergarden and grade one. I guess I was playing, getting stories read to me, eventually reading stories, and hanging out with the one other student (a boy named Alex) who was also allergic to peanuts during snack time. I would say though, one of the most important things about myself during that time period was my love of the colour pink. Apparently I insisted on all-pink clothing, and as a result, barely wear pink even now.

Oh man. 1991. That would be the second half of second grade and the first half of third grade. Second grade was fine. Sort of. I had friendships then that wouldn’t survive the summer and I grew taller than my teacher (awkward). Third grade was the best. My teacher instilled the Arts in us and Writing. I read everything the library had on famous painters and I began writing actual stories including a series of books based on a flying foal. Adorbs. If you had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up then the answer would have been a big, loud, ARTIST. I still hold onto that feeling.
One girl I met for the first time in that class would continue to be one of my closest friends today (we became friends because our names rhymed!).
That was also the first year I experienced a bully. And fought back.
It was even the same time that I would learn that I can run really, really fast (this and the bully issue are actually related). Helped me go on to play Varsity sports in high school for all four years.
Oddly, it was the only year of school where I despised Math – I think this is why I can’t do percentages very well…
Oh, and I grew another two inches but this time my teacher was far taller. So, it wasn’t a problem.
(now, 1992 – that’s when I read The Hobbit for the first time! A serious life event.)

Oh, and I can’t make any pop culture references because TV was strictly limited to Disney Afternoon at the babysitter’s and even then you couldn’t keep me pinned to a chair for very long. Hy-Per.
Why sit when you can be outside building forts out of tree branches? (Our favorite game was “Pioneers,” we were beyond playing “House”) :)

In June 1991, it was the summer between freshman and sophomore years in high school, and I was on an exchange trip to England, where I imposed my teenaged awkwardness on a whole new continent. Then I came back and went to 4H camp all summer, as I did from ages 8-16. 1991 was also cool for me, because it was the summer that my braces came off and I got contacts. It wasn’t exactly She’s All That, but I shed a bunch of ugly duckling-ness all at once.

Is anyone here a manager at a restaurant? I’m probably going to offered a position as manager at a restaurant I’m working at tomorrow, and I want to know how likely my demands are to be met. My demands are more money than what my predecessor was making ($12/hour) and less hours (she was working — or at least expected to work — 14 hours a day/6 days a week). The restaurant just launched less than two weeks ago, so I feel that the hours expectation is probably going to go down, and her pay rate seemed absurdly low, but I haven’t worked in the food industry as a full-time gig ever, so maybe salaries just suck.

I haven’t been in the restaurant industry for years, but I think more than $12/hr for a management position sounds reasonable; just make sure you have it firmly spelled out how you get your tips if you end up taking tables. And, yeah, 14 hours a day/6 days a week is a lot of hours and too-long shifts. Anything more than 40 hours should be time and a half, and I think setting a cap, maybe 50 or 55 hours per week would be reasonable.

But the coolest thing did happen today. I was a dual major in college, English and Secondary Education. No one, and I mean NO ONE liked my writing in any of my creative writing classes. I secretly harbored a desire to write things ‘to be read’ because I think way too much and have very strong (hard headed?) opinions I wanted to share. I tried a few pieces for the school paper, but I really didn’t like interviewing and reporting ‘the facts’. So I put my desire on the back burner. Then, quite recently, I found an awesome Ladyblog with intelligent voices and conversations that I quickly fell in love with. A thought started to form in the back of my mind that I might be able to share some of my thoughts on this blog. Well, today my desire has seen its fulfillment. The very first article I ever wrote for public consumption was posted here today. Yeah me! Thank you all for being here, so that I might join in too!

Wooo! Also, I loved your article, it really resonated with my own views of and experience with exercise. I also think it is great to encourage women to do weight lifting/weigh bearing exercise, as it has huge health benefits (and practical benefits like carrying boxes and shit). Anyways, I had no idea it was your first article, that’s fantastic. :-)

I was 7, ad probably entering first grade, which was right across the cement courtyard from my kindergarten classroom. I got glasses that year after pretending I couldn’t read the board or books, thereby forfeiting a number of stars on my reading chart, which I rectified as soon as I had the glasses I coveted (they were baby blue). I also got in trouble with my teacher because I told someone I didn’t want to go to a birthday party because a girl who bullied me would be there. Despite that, I called my teacher ‘mom’ for the first and only time. My bully’s mom called me “freakishly skinny” and I started my continuing concern about the sharpness of my shoulder blades. I also rode in my first open walk-trot-canter class on my aunt’s Arabian and won. I had not yet got my own horse (sad), but I also had not started wearing oversized shirt that I thought disguised how tiny I was. In fact, I think my favorite outfit was a pastel-colored “southwestern print” skirt with fringe and a matching knit long-sleeved top that had the same print on the front, worn with white cowboy boots and gold horse head earrings (I think I got my ears pierced that year, too). Overall, I think it was a pretty good year.

Holy crap this thread makes me feel old.

Aside from meeting Sally J, which was pretty awesome, 1991 was a really great year. I loved college, I had great friends, I did lots of interesting things. I totally want to listen to The Cure now, too. Do you still have your shirt? I kept mine for the longest, but it finally disintegrated in the wash, unironically.

I started first grade in the fall of 1991. I suppose that’s the year I learned to read in kindergarten. I remember my brother had a Vanilla Ice tape that he liked. I had a good birthday that year with a bright pink cake with pink frosting, both flavored vanilla, that my mom baked from scratch for me. I also got my Sleeping Beauty dolls (from Mattel) as presents.

My brother and I played Sonic the Hedgehog on our Sega Genesis which we acquired that year, and he occasionally let me play his Phantasy Star games. He saved up his allowance for quite a while to be able to buy that Genesis. At that point there were two Phantasy Star games, the second being the most ridiculously hard RPG I’ve ever seen.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was also very big, and in the summer we’d go to the community pool which had a waterslide. I also remember playing a lot of tag and games with our neighbors, though that may be just memories of other summers. Probably that year my mom made tons of cookies and candies to send out in the mail to friends and relatives, and we were only allowed to eat a maximum of two cookies/candies from each batch.

I turned 5 in May of ’91, so… I do remember around that age rocking some awesome early 90’s style, including leggings (I loved leggings so much and refused to wear any other kind of pants for quite some time) and a 3-tiered ruffly denim skirt. It may not have been quite ’91 when I had the skirt, but it was my favorite item of clothing that I remember from my childhood.

I drew you all a picture in Paint. As I remember, the skirt was acid-wash, which I have artfully rendered with the spray-paint tool.
[img]http://persephonemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/skirt.jpg[/img]

Summer of 1991 I was on a road trip to Manitoba with my brother and my parents, headed for a family reunion. Highlights of the trip included:
– Every radio station from Vancouver to Winnipeg playing “Everything I Do, I Do it for You” by Bryan Adams
– Mosquitoes the size of baby hummingbirds in Saskatchewan
– Watching cool sheet lightning from the window of a hotel room somewhere on the prairies
– Family reunion in a town of less than 200 people (many of whom were related to my grandpa in some way)
– Family reunion included an actual drunken barn dance hoedown

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