Take a Walk With Me Down Memory Lane...

When I saw Andrea’s prompt to take a trip down memory lane, I knew I couldn’t resist.  I am a sucker for looking at old pictures, reliving old memories, and just being… nostalgic.

I am a child of the 80s and therefore, a teen of the 90s… the first high school graduating class of the new millennium to be exact. 

I remember when the TV only had nineteen stations.  I remember when neighborhoods were safe enough for kids to run wild in all day during the summer.  I remember when the only thing you wanted to do on a Friday night was go to the skate center with your friends, and I remember the days when MTV actually played music videos. 

I remember the days before Facebook and Instagram and Snap Chat and texting ruled the world and instead kids passed notes in class and locked themselves in the laundry room for hours to talk to their best friends with the long spiral phone cord clamped in the closed door in an attempt to have a little bit of privacy. 

It was such a different time back then, and while I wouldn’t want to live those days without technology again, I’m grateful to have known the time before the “digital age.” 

This post could be reeeeally long if I let it, so to ensure that doesn’t happen, I’m pretty much keeping my trip down memory lane to the eighties and nineties.  I also wasn’t sure how to proceed with the formatting of the post, so I figured the easiest way to do it was to divide it up into categories. 

But first, a few pictures to show you what I looked like during these decades.  EEK!

Favorite Shows

One of my earliest memories is sitting in between the rungs of an old bar stool turned sideways in my Daddy’s studio and eating a bowl of fruit with chunks of cheese tossed in.  (I couldn’t have been older than four years old.)  My mom was a stay at home mom at that point because she had just given birth to my first brother, and some days during lunch time she would allow me to watch my favorite shows while I ate. 

Pinwheel

Today’s Special

Picture Pages

Any of those ring a bell?!  They were all on Nickelodeon and they were just the best ever!  I actually don’t remember much about Pinwheel except for the theme song (Pinwheel, pinwheel spinning around.  Look at my pinwheel and see what I’ve found.) but I know I sure did love it!

Today’s Special was a show about a mannequin in a department store named Jeff who came to life when you said “hocus pocus alimagocus.”  The lady Jodie was the department store manager or something like that and then there was a security guard named Sam who was a puppet, and a mouse named Muffy who was also a puppet.  Guys, this was my favorite show ever as a kid.  Do any of you remember it??

Picture Pages was a show hosted by Bill Cosby where he would draw and write all sorts of things on a big workbook to teach kids and it had the best theme song!!

One I got a little older, my little bro and I watched Inspector Gadget, the cartoon version of Ghost Busters, and the cartoon version of Beetlejuice that came on for Saturday morning cartoons.  And KIDS INCORPORATED!!  Y'all!!  My favorite!

And in the evening, we of course, loved Full House, Perfect Strangers, Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper, Family Matters, Step by Step, Boy Meets World, and all of the other TGIF faves.  Why don’t they do TGIF anymore?!  Somebody needs to bring that back!

We also loved The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Home Improvement, Saved by the Bell, Clarissa Explains it All, The Wonder Years, Doug, and Rugrats.

And then in my teens I really got into Dawson's Creek, Supermarket Sweep, My So-Called life, Beavis and Butthead (even though my parents hated it), TRL (Total Request Live on MTV), and Friends. 

One show that also sticks out in my mind from way back is You Can’t Do That on Television… I always remember hating that show, though.  Haha.

Games

We, of course, played all of the traditional games like Life and Monopoly and Trouble, but my personal faves were the girly eighties games like:

Girl Talk – nothing says fun like taking a “dare” and having to let an ice cube melt under your arm pit!  And watch out, if you don’t do it, you’ll get a zit sticker!

Mall Madness – “There’s a sale at the CHI-TCHEN store.”  Did anybody else’s mall madness sound defective when it tried to say KITCHEN?  Haha.

Sweet Valley High – I never read the books (blasphemy, I know) but I sure did love the board game!  Somebody gave it to me as a gift and my friends and I always had a blast fighting over who GOT to be Lila or Jessica and who HAD to be Enid.  Let’s face it… nobody wanted Winston Egbert for a boyfriend!  Ha!

Super Mario Brothers 3 on Nintendo

Sonic the Hedgehog on Seeeegaaaa!  (Up, down, left, right, hold A, press start!)  If y’all know what I’m talking about then y’all are my peeps!

MASH Game

Books

Baby-Sitter’s Club – Y’all, I was a Baby-Sitter’s Club FREAK.  I owned literally every single one and there were over a hundred!  Not only did I have all of the books from the regular series, but I also had all of the mysteries and super specials.  I mean, I could not get enough of Kristy, Claudia, Mary-Anne, Stacey, and Dawn!  Oh, and those other two that came later.  What were their names?  Mallory and Jessi?  Yes, yes, because I specifically remember the book Mallory Hates Boys (And Gym).  Lol.  My very favorite was #8 Boy Crazy Stacey... I wanted to be her so bad... minus the diabetes, of course.  

Fear Street by R.L. Stine – Did anybody else read these books?!  I owned all of these as well and they were a favorite in my early teens after I outgrew BSC.  My favorites were The Betrayal, The Secret, and The Burning.

Music

New Kids on the Block was my very first musical obsession (and also my very first CD – or compact disc as people called it back then – LOL) and I had posters of Joe McIntyre all over my room.  He was my very first celebrity crush (or obsession, maybe?).  I never got to see them in concert as I was only in second grade when they were popular, but that didn’t stop me from adoring them!  

I was also a huge fan of Tiffany and Debbie Gibson… ya know, staples of the eighties.  And I think my very favorite song that came out of the eighties was One More Try by Timmy T.  I don’t have a clue who Timmy T is or what happened to him, but he was a one hit wonder who completely spoke to me with his romantic lyrics in third grade.  Haha.

I have always been a huge music lover, so I can’t possibly discuss all of my faves in this post, but just know that I have loved my fair share of boy bands as I gradually moved on to Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, and Boyz II Men after NKOTB left the scene. 

Movies

Staples when I was little...

Fievel 
Beauty and the Beast
The Little Mermaid
Lion King
Pocahontas
Home Alone
Mighty Ducks (the second was the best one!)
Mrs. Doubtfire
The Sandlot


As a teenager...

Clueless
Romeo & Juliet (the Leo version, of course)
10 Things I Hate About You
Can't Hardly Wait
American Pie
Varsity Blues
Cruel Intentions
Titanic

Y'all, I could go on FOREVER!

Crushes

Devon Sawa - the boy who played Casper when he turned into human form in the movie

Joey McIntyre - NKOTB

JTT - Jonathan Taylor Thomas, that is

Leo - circa the Romeo & Juliet and Titanic days 

Ryan Phillipe - circa Cruel Intentions days

Let's all take a moment to remember the pull-out posters of Bop and Teen Beat magazines... are those still around??

And did anyone else think that Michael Bolton was as hilarious as my friend as I did??  We still to this day crack up when we see him!  I mean, honestly...

Toys

I can’t possibly elaborate on all of these, but here’s a list of my faves:

Care Bears (this is the exact one that I had)

Cabbage Patch Kids

View Master

Maple Town Dolls (Do y’all remember those??  Nobody ever remembers those!)

Pound Puppies (this was the exact one that I had)

Fisher Price 1-2-3 Roller Skates (everybody had those!!)

Fashion Plates (remember how you could switch out the plates, rub over them with a special pencil and then color them in?!  Best ever!)

Spirograph

Dear Diary (you guys, I don't think I have ever wanted something so bad in my entire life so bad as I wanted a Dear Diary!!)

Ribbon Dancer (fun fact, my BFF and I made our own out of sticks and crepe paper until we were finally given our own… I kid you not)

AAAALLLL the Sanrio Surprises stuff... this was my exact Spotty Dotty case!  OMG!

The Heart Family (they were like Barbies, but not!)

Big Wheels (I loved my pink one so much!)

Squiggle Wiggle Writer

Caboodle 

And some toys that I always wanted but never got…

PJ Sparkles (I still remember the entire jingle, y’all!  PJ Sparkles shine the light on me, SHINE SHINE SHINE!)

Popples

A clear telephone (you were SO flipping cool if you had one of those)

Snacks

Bubble Tape

Fruit Stripe Gum 

Fashion and Beauty Trends

Ooooh my favorite part!  I have always been a slave to fashion, even in the eighties when I was tiny!  Some of my favorites:

Side ponytails

Crimped hair

 Sebagos with the laces twirled up

Junk Necklaces (they were literal junk, y’all)

Wearing two different pairs of colored socks and layering them so you could see both colors

Spandex shorts with lace at the bottom of each leg (I remember when I got my first pair of these, y’all.  They were electric blue and I thought I was the hottest thing on the block!)

Kissing Potion (I’d still use it if they still made it – ha!)

Keds without socks.

Wearing socks almost up to our knees in high school.

Colored tights with denim skirts.

Big colorful sweaters with turtlenecks underneath!

Colored socks with white tights and tennis shoes.  And perms... eek.

Random Memories

Going to the skate center and tying neon plastic streamers in our hair so they would flow behind us as we skated.  Unfortunately I have no pictures of that.

Ordering “suicides” as our drink of choice – all drinks on the drink machines mixed together… oh, except for diet coke.  ;o)

Wanting so badly to have professional Glamour Shots taken, but instead doing our own.  On several different occasions.  Ha!

Wearing a pager in high school.  I mean OMG.  (It's hard to see in this picture, but it is very obviously there!  Oh, and while we're at it let's talk about that She's All That movie poster on the wall behind us!!!!)

Well, I don’t know about you, but I have had the very best time reminiscing!  I can’t wait to read everyone else’s posts!

And now I'll leave ya with one of quintessential Lindsay... denim skirt, big socks with tennis shoes, and sunglasses on my head!  Not much has changed!  Well, except maybe the socks...

*Linking up with Momfessionals for Show and Tell Tuesday.

And now it's time for the Tuesday Talk Link Up!

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