Hello world. 

This week “Remember This?” is coming to you a bit late due to holiday, “back to school” mentality, and my overall laziness. I’ve been holed up with homeopathy and philosophy and psychology books so long that I am ready for a break; a trip down memory lane.

Thus, tonight’s episode of “Remember This?” And since my baby is now a teenager, I’m going to focus tonight’s items on things that were more relevant to my teen/tween years. Oh the humanity…

Remember This? episode 13

1. AOL instant messenger. Oh the hours spent with friends in front of my little icon, chatting with other friends I saw a mere hour or two ago at school. Talking about nothing. Let’s not forget the humor in our first screen name. Mine was “surferchic56.” We won’t discuss that I grew up in Minnesota, about as far from a surfer chick as was humanly possible. We won’t talk about my second screen name, the aptly pretentious “pablohoney” which I felt appropriately demonstrated my patronage of Radiohead. We will just look back and laugh. and speaking of the interwebs…

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2. Dial-up internet. I apologize if anyone still lives in the dark ages and has to listen to the high pitched sounds followed by dialing noise and 30 seconds of blackout before you know if you managed to make a crappy connection to the network or not. Oh, those were dark days indeed. Us poor kids could barely even conceive of the idea of wi-fi… simple times.

3. Nelly. We haven’t forgotten about him, have we? Nelly, of “Hot in Herrrre,” “Ride wit me,” “Country Grammar,” “Air Force Ones,” and “Batter Up!” fame. Oh, and I suppose it would be criminal to forget about “Pimp Juice,” that old classic. All jokes aside, though, I was crazy into Nelly as a teenager and thought he and his “Lunatics” were the shizz.

4. Titanic. First of all, I can’t believe this movie just had, like, its 15 year anniversary edition come out or something. How old am I, anyway? (the answer to that is 27 and a half, if you’re curious). I also can’t believe how ridiculously epic this movie was/is, and that my bestie and I wrote creepy stalker letters fan mail to Leo DiCaprio and thought he would drop Gisele or whoever he was dating at the time to come rescue our 13 year old selves from junior high. Right.

5. Trucker hats/ Von Dutch hats. Oh man. I remember one of my notable high school boyfriends lamenting that “his” trend of wearing these hats (it is true, he wore them long before Ashton Kutcher made them cool) was being degraded by the masses. To be fair, there are a lot of reasons to lament this moment in popular fashion. Especially the ones of the “Von Dutch” variety, as we so aptly renamed “Von…” well, use your imagination, but it rhymes with Koosh.

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There you have it! What were some of the hallmarks of your teen and tween years? Did you rock a Von Dutch hat and stay up all night on AIM?

Meri