When I was your age...

[johnboysmole]

...I cut out the neck and sleeves of my sweatshirts and thought I looked damn good!

...I wore a Michael Jackson pin on my Michael Jackson T-shirt and listened to Thriller until I wore out the record. (Yes. I said the record.)

...I listened to the Purple Rain soundtrack and heard "Darling Nikki" for the first time and was confused about the "masturbating with a magazine" lyric. I was like "the papercuts must be a bitch..."

...To make mix-tapes I used actual albums and a tape recorder with a microphone that I layed on a pillow.

...I had to get out of my chair to change the channel. Sometimes on the shitty TV with the aluminum foil on the antenna, I had to use pliers on the dial because it came off and I lost it.

...I tore a big ol' hole in the ozone layer with Aqua Net trying to get my big hair even bigger.

Damn. I feel old and I'm only 33.

[Malle Babbe]

I think this thread could also cover teen and kid years as well, like the following:

When I was your age, cartoons were only on TV on Saturday morning!

[forgetful]

JenniPoo said:

When I was your age Will Smith was but a wee punk from West Philly (born and raised).

...John Travolta was where he belonged (in the bowels of celebrity) and

...no one knew what a destructive force the Mickey Mouse Club would one day be.

JenniPoo, I think we're the same age.
Also...
- Fergie from the BEP was a cute blonde on Kids Inc
- Arnold was going to "be back" and not in the political sort of way
- Wearing your boyfriend's worn out flannel shirt was the epitome of fashion

[tmi]

MalleBabbe said:

When I was your age, we didn't have Napster, KaZaa, or binary newsgroups; if you wanted a song without paying for it, you had to tape it off of the radio. And you had to hope the DJ didn't blather too much at the beginning or ending of the song, or that you weren't listening to the shortened version of a given song (Dammit, I want to listen to the instrumental bit of "Light My Fire).

And mind you we had to sprint through 3 feet of snow across the bedroom in order to hit "record" on our boom boxes... Which were big suckers, nothing like these new fangled flash players the size of a Zippo lighter.

And that shit was expensive, too, and you had to save your two dollar allowance, the money you earned babysitting (a dollar an hour where I lived), maybe some birthday money, and it was a BIG DEAL if and when you finally got one. The tapes were hissy and inevitably songs did get cut off. The big boys at the back of the school bus had a huge one they'd crank BOC and Zep on while they chewed tobacco and spat out the window.

Speaking of money: credit cards weren't everywhere-- high school kids sure didn't have them, even rich kids didn't; no such thing as an ATM; your parents had to go to the bank on Friday to deposit the paycheck and get cash for the weekend-- if you ran out of cash, you ran out of cash; if you had a savings account you had a little passbook.

ETA: Oh, and headphones? were these huge padded things bigger than earmuffs, with thick curly cords that kept you very close to the above mentioned all-in-one stereo/turntable contraption. Very good for listening to Floyd. When Walkmans finally came along, they were so expensive only THE coolest people could afford them.

[Malle Babbe]

They weren't the only thing that was expensive. I remeber walking into the local video rental place (Erol's, Northern Virginia REPRESENT!!!) and seeing Beverly Hills Cop being sold for the low low price of $89.95!

ETA: Wow, tmi at least they we're spitting out the window... I was in a school were one had to accept big ol' wads of caw in the drinking fountains. In 1992!

[tmi]

MalleBabbe said:

They weren't the only thing that was expensive. I remeber walking into the local video rental place (Erol's, Northern Virginia REPRESENT!!!) and seeing Beverly Hills Cop being sold for the low low price of $89.95!

ETA: Wow, tmi at least they we're spitting out the window... I was in a school were one had to accept big ol' wads of caw in the drinking fountains. In 1992!

yo, NoVA!!!
which county? I'm talking Arlington, not explicitly giving away years quite yet. And Erol's? Absolutely. Beta or VHS? WAY more stuff available on beta-- which was, of course, what we had--we felt so smart. Our Erol's was in Fall's Church, across from Seven Corners. Crowded as hell on Friday nights. (For some reason, no one watched videos on weeknights. ??)

ANYWAY. CEMJ-- before the E, before the C, and we weren't made queasy by mentioning him by name. When Thriller was the hot album, and the hot video (in the 20 video version of MTV), and his dance moves were seriously hot shit. Remember the moonwalk? The thriller monster DANCE? PYT really rocked, and (if I'm honest) still does.

And? he still had a nose. I'm really showing my age if I remember that.

[dwanollah]

ANYWAY. CEMJ-- before the E, before the C, and we weren't made queasy by mentioning him by name. When Thriller was the hot album, and the hot video (in the 20 video version of MTV), and his dance moves were seriously hot shit. Remember the moonwalk? The thriller monster DANCE? PYT really rocked, and (if I'm honest) still does.

And? he still had a nose. I'm really showing my age if I remember that.

Yeah, and we all thought Prince was the crazy-ass vanity-project-makin' (no pun intended) self-indulgent, ostentatious black male artist of our generation.

[Shalamar]

• When Darth Vader revealed that he was Luke Skywalker's father, the entire theatre gasped, because the script hadn't been leaked onto the Internet months before.
  
• When Michael Myers was "dead" for the first time in the original Halloween movie, and then he sat up, the audience screamed. The old fake-out ending hadn't been done to death yet.
  
• Farrah Fawcett still had "-Majors" at the end of her name, and she was every boy's fantasy.
  
• Happy Days hadn't jumped the shark yet, and imitating "The Fonz" was extremely cool. ("Ayyyy!")

[snacktastic]

When I was your age, I learned all about music from listening American Top 40 from my transistor radio.

[lemons]

When I was your age:

I didn't have a remote control for my TV (although they were invented), Michael Jackson was the hottest thing going and I owned Thriller, and Kirk Cameron was not a self righteous Bible thumper.

Rob Lowe and Melissa Gilbert were in love.

Michael Douglas didn't know Catherine Zeta-Jones, probably because she was still in school.

The rock and pop section in the record store(!) were in the front.

Don Johnson was cool and wore pastels.

MTV and VH-1 played VIDEOS!

I know, it's all so hard to believe.