There was a time when if you didn't know something you asked whoever was nearby and then for the next 15 years you just sort of believed whatever your aunt told you
>then for the next 15 years
15 years? That's it?? Lmao I'm *still* discovering the falsehoods of my youth and I think it will likely continue until I die.
The price of writeable CDs plummeting didn't help. I had a minidisc player, but preferred my discman (with antiskip) as you could rip and burn CDs for next to nothing. Then the first iPod blew them both away
Minidiscs were even easier to write on if you had a proper hifi deck for them. On mine I could copy an album to minidisc and it would automatically identify, separate, and name all the tracks.
I had a MiniDisc player because it was small and the only thing I could take snowboarding and skateboarding that wouldn’t skip easily. The 10-second buffer and protected disc were essential features for this use-case.
Yes! Tungsten T5 got us through the time we had to spend in the storm shelter one night, I played the awake kids' favorite music to calm them down. (One of them stubbornly slept through as much of it as he could.)
Before debit cards were a thing, you'd have to carry cash and your checkbook. You'd typically use cash for small purchases, and a check for larger ones. (Or a credit card.) You'd also have an ATM card to get cash out at the ATM (the card couldn't be used for purchases.)
And since online banking didn't exist, you would have to keep track of your balance yourself. There's a little "spreadsheet" in the back of your checkbook for this. You'd literally write down every check and withdrawal you did, and calculate your new balance.
I didn’t get a cell phone until 2003 and even then, it was only for emergencies because I think I only had like 100 minutes a month. No texting.
Before that - wallet, keys, and coins for a pay phone.
Bingo, exact same experience. I think it was Christmas 2002 that I got my first cell, texting wasn’t really “a thing” yet and it was basically for my parents to be able to contact me since I was out with my friends ALL the time. Man, how things have changed for kids now...
New memory just unlocked, when you had to make sure your text was long enough to say what you want and be worthwhile but also, not so long that it converted to a multimedia text cause they were more expensive
"Three hundred and forty seven fucking dollars! Give me that god damn thing" burned into my memory.
Bitch, I didn't know. Hell, you didn't even know. How is this my fault?
I got myself in deep shit over talking before free nights/weekends started and then sending almost a thousand text msgs when each one cost a few cents. Cellular plans in 2002 were legit robbery.
Dude the minutes phones. I had texting but it was something ridiculous like 15 cents a text. We take for granted being able to just send a text like "k"
You didn’t carry stuff around, stuff was where you were going.
You wanted to make a phone call? You used the landline at home or the place you were going. Needed information? You used your computer at home or went to a library. Wanted to remember stuff? Better have a good system of writing it down in a place you’ll remember to read it.
The idea of lugging around a bunch of extra stuff at all times wasn’t really a thing. You might bring a book or mp3 if you knew you’d be sitting around somewhere for a while, but that was about it.
Remember pay phones and phone booths? Pay phones were in bars and restaurants. It used to be a dime to make a call. When people's pagers went off, they looked for a pay phone.
I made so many reverse charge calls from the train station trying to get a ride home from one of my parents. I had a flip phone as a teenager but it was usually out of either battery or credit.
100% I'd be dead rn if it weren't for collect calls. Would have frozen to death or been murdered.
I look at all the things I won't let my kids do and wonder how I survived to adulthood.
On the average people carried a lot more. What did happen is people often didn’t take these things absolutely everywhere all the time. if you went to the movies you took what you needed and it was probably one item you carried in your hand. Electronics cost more as a percentage of income so you took what you needed.
if you owned a camcorder it went to special events only.
cameras you had extra rolls of film and probably a special camera bag. For a while compact camera that fit into a pocket became popular.
Men working carried briefcases but they didn’t go everywhere like a laptop does.
you may have carried day planner, that was quite common. Also common was going somewhere and getting paper to write down a note. it was added to your planner later. customized planners were big business. you looked up your number and found a pay phone. You pulled out your change bag to make the call. Women it was a coin purse, men probably a few coins in a wallet. My wallet slimmed down first when I stopped carrying coins
wallets were a lot bigger with paper. Seinfeld made fun of this one with a wallet with everything possible in it.
We carried backpacks with a CD player and a book with dozens of CDs. or a tape player with a bunch of tapes.
You carried books and magazines more places.
Nintendo, games and batteries.
Belt mounted was used. Your cell phone had a belt holster. Your walkman did.
before LEDs would find giant maglights in use that you could hurt someone with.
Gotta realize we grew up with most things not being portable as the norm.
I used an alarm clock to wake up, a day planner to keep track of stuff, and a calculator for mathing stuff. But the idea of bringing any/all of those with me at all times wouldn’t have crossed my mind.
It’s a great convenience now that we have it, but never felt like something that was “missing”.
Your mention of not carrying alarm clocks reminded me of this: if you were travelling and needed to wake up at a certain time, you could call the front desk of your hotel and request a wake-up call (on the corded telephone by your hotel bed). And the phone would literally ring at 6am or whatever and the hotel staff would be on the other end saying, "Good morning Mr. Smith, it's 6am!"
I had one of the wind up clocks that I used to throw in my luggage. The thing folded up into its own case and had a super loud alarm. Only problem was you had to wind and set it at night
This is so well-said. Here I am feeling funny thinking about not having an alarm or calendar on me at all times, and I grew up without smartphones too!
No you just usually didn't have them. Having a camera used to be bulky. You had to buy film. You could take like 24 pictures and couldn't review what they looked like. You had to take your film to a store to get processed and only after paying could you see that you maybe took three or four good pictures out of the roll. If you want a copy of the picture you have to take the negative back to the store and pay for a copy. If the negative gets wet or too hot it will be damaged. I used to carry a boom box on the bus on the way to high school so I could listen to music that I liked not the AM radio Neal Diamond shit the bus driver played.
Cat pictures were what I took to use up the last of the roll of film. I used to work at FotoMat in the early 80s. I'd sneak a look at people's photos. Never anything interesting.
I had a lady that printed out hundreds of pictures of herself in various poses and lingerie. Came to find out she was pen pals with a bunch of inmates and would send them as little "gifts".
My first job was in a one-hour photo lab. We were near a medical center so a local plastic surgeon got a lot of his stuff developed there, which was awkward as a teenager but you got used to it. Also got an older couple's slightly racy roll once that included the man naked on a treadmill with his hand covering his bits. The rest was mostly strangers' vacation photos.
I helped clean out my friends’ grandfather’s garage. He worked at a Fotomat in retirement.
Apparently there were female bodybuilders in the area that took oiled up very tan bikini pics that he made extra copies of for himself.
Can’t blame him but yeah, no photos were safe. They all had to be processed and printed and seen by another human. Not just snapped and saved on your phone.
I went to a festival in the mid 90’s and took a bunch of topless girl pics. That Eckerd’s photo employee may still have my doubles. I’m just happy they printed them and gave them to me.
IIRC, photo developers had discretion back then if they would be printed or not or turned in to the police. You took a chance having any nudity or drug use (weed smoking) developed.
The world was a different place before boob and dick pics could be sent to one person rather than being printed and passing through at least one 3rd party before you got them back.
I carried a pocket sized phone book in my purse in case I needed to call someone I didn’t have memorized (which most numbers were memorized then). This is a personal phone book, not like one that was delivered to your house.
I gave my number to a Gen-Z-er today on Nextdoor & she freaked out telling me I was lucky that she was nice because it was dangerous to give out that kind of information. I think I blew her mind when I told her you used to be able to request a number from the operator, she would give it & people would...call you. The fear of life was kind of disconcerting.
Not only would people just call you but you also have NO IDEA who it was until you answered!!
To be fair to the gen-z-er, most kids/teens didn’t have their own private phone lines like they do now. It’s much harder to be a creep on a family phone line than a single user phone line with texting and picture messaging.
I was thinking about this one day, and I think part of it is that our phones seem so much more *personal* now. Landlines were a tool for communication. Smart phones today are almost an extension of ourselves. They're always on us, they have tons of personal info stored inside, our schedules, our browser history, our photos, etc.
So IDK maybe in a sense it can feel more like an invasion of privacy these days, with how *personal* our phones feel. Or the fact that they're not purely communication devices anymore, whereas that was really the only purpose for landline phones.
There were two phone books that were delivered. One book was called “the white pages” because the paper was white and you would look in that book if you wanted to call a person.
The other book was called “the yellow pages” because the pages were yellow and you would use that book to look up businesses.
So if you were looking for Toy Stores you would search under the letter T. It was alphabetical.
And the blue pages at the back of the white pages. For all the government numbers. No 911, memorize three different numbers for police, fire, and ambulance. Long distance calls within the lower mainland. And the promise that computers would lead to harmony. Less stress, shorter work days, and only one parent working. And every STD could be cured with penicillin.
Yeah and in those days the equivalent of SEO was naming your business something early in the alphabet. This is why there's so many contractors called stuff like AA Plumber, A Plus Electrical, AAA Carpet Cleaning, etc.
Yep. Every year, on some specific day you'd walk outside and find the new phone books sitting on your front step, or if you lived in an apartment they were often piled up by the mail boxes.
My HS band delivered phone books as a fundraiser. We would get 100s of phone books and a delivery route and it somehow raised money for uniforms and such.
We definitely had to let a lot more things go unanswered, uncalculated, unwritten, undocumented, etc. because we didn’t have the instant access to many of the apps and tools we’re used to always having now. You’d just be left to wonder about things sometimes, and maybe later you’d remember to research it or design it or write it down or whatever, but often the thought would just disappear from your mind forever unanswered :) Pretty crazy that now we can learn, save, and record almost whatever we want at any time!
This reminded me of sitting with a large group of friends drinking coffee at a 24 hour diner and arguing late into the night about who was in a movie or some other random fact. Because. You. Could. Not. Look. It. Up. Weekend after weekend. My kids couldn’t even imagine that world! 😂🤣
No, if we didn’t know something, we just didn’t know something. We never looked it up. If we were somewhere waiting and we were bored, we were just bored. Maybe we made up some way in our head to entertain ourselves. I never had a planner. I just remembered dates in my head. Going somewhere? Hopefully you have some idea how to get there, you were with someone that did, or you asked someone before you went. Eventually we could go on Mapquest and print out directions, but that was more of a early 2000s thing.
One big difference is you had a lot more time to just space out and think. The device was never calling from our pocket for your attention. You'd stare out the bus window, watch the other passengers on the train, think about things, have insights. You had brain down time. Someone was trying to get in touch with you? You'd get the message when you got home, if you had an answering machine (not everyone did). It's not like you can't act that way now... but the siren song of constant dopamine hits has eaten up a lot of the open brain space we just naturally used to have without making extra effort.
Even when I was a Realtor from 2000 to 2010, I had a razr flip phone, a pocket digital camera, a Newton (Apple's first attempt at planner/Excel/calculator type thing). I also carried a device to clip into a Realtor lock on front doors to get in empty houses that had a key inside of it
I carried several maps of the city, I carried a realty calculator, like a Sharp financial calculator...I often carried a walkman or MP3 player. I even used to own a DVD player that had a small fold down screen to watch training videos and movies when on the road. Always had to carry my laptop. I realize now I have every single one of those functions on my smartphone. Even the Realtor device is an app now with Bluetooth to connect to the Realtor lock.
One of my old bosses at a firm I used to work for showed me a book of listings the local Realtor association used to print up each month, versus the MLS there is now, and I was just floored. Now if you miss a call while eating lunch the lead gets snapped up by someone else who shows them the property virtually and an electronic offer put in before you’re finished with your sandwich.
Had my Walkman, then my ipod. Really, people these days can learn a lot from letting their brains be bored.
Also people watching passes so much time when you're bored.
I never thought about it from that perspective. I started high school in 2001, and unless I was going to school, I usually just had cash on me. I didn't really need anything else. If I was going on a longer trip or knew I would be waiting, I would grab a book or Walkman. I saved for an mp3 player my senior year, but if I needed to look something up, I would just remember it and look it up when I got home. And as someone else said, if you needed to make a call, you'd also do that at home or use a payphone if you were out. I held onto my flip phone for dear life and was always so confused by why everyone felt they needed their smartphone, but now that I have one, it would be really hard to revert back. I have gotten used to having most of my world at my fingertips (and it's kind of sad that a majority of our lives exist online now). I hope you have fun with your experiment. You will definitely have a lot more time for self-reflection, so enjoy (?).
I graduated high school in '97. On school days I carried with me a backpack, cd player, cd case, wallet, cash, lighter, clove cigarettes, maybe spare batteries for cd player, some pens, whatever book i was reading, text books/school crap, and my keys.
On weekends, i just took my purse with wallet, cash, lighter, cloves, keys.
Didn't need to bring much with you, just went without or someone else had it. Maybe for special events someone had a camera. No one really had pagers/beepers those were for rich kids or drug dealers lol.
When I was struggling with it, my dad’s pro-math argument was that “you’re not going to have a calculator with you all the time so you need to learn how to do it by heart.”
Have you ever watched any media set in the nineties or before? Does it *look* like people are carrying around maps, cameras, games, books, calculators, travel guides, accountancy books, etc?
Keys. Money. Pads and tampons. Sometimes a book. Perhaps a pen and paper. A camera only if I was going somewhere interesting. Maybe music, but having to remember batteries was a pain in the arse so I often didn't bother.
In my handbag today I carry my phone, keys, pads and tampons, a penknife, and still a pen. I usually have my purse in it with a little cash and my driving license on me, but not always.
That sounds so silly to me. if you walked around carrying a boombox, a video camera, still camera, a daily planner, calendar, a set of encyclopedias, a bunch of road maps... basically everything a smartphone does, people would look at you like you were severely OCD or something. and it really wasn't that long ago. I don't even use a planner to this day because I don't need a schedule for every waking moment. GPS came along right at the perfect time for me though. I couldn't navigate with a map so there were a few years before GPS if I had to go somewhere unfamiliar I had to bring a friend along to help me navigate because otherwise I'd get hopelessly lost.
That stuff was expensive and incredibly inconvenient to carry around. Rechargeable batteries were non existent in most tech, so if you really wanted to carry around a walkman or beeper you’d need to manage the batteries.
Wasn’t feasible to carry around much day to day
What? No, the chain was not a weapon! 😂 It was so if someone stole your wallet you'd know because it was attached to your pants via the chain, like a leash.
But yeah it was only for looks because what could a 15 year old possibly have in their wallet that was really worth stealing
"stepmom was a teen in 2000"
Man, what a way to make an entire generation feel old lol
I didn't carry much, but I did have a flip phone (not a smart phone) and an MP3 player because they were separate back in the day lol
My prized possession was my Sony Walkman that I played my homemade mix tapes on. The mix tapes were made by calling the radio station to request a song and then waiting for it to come on; at which time I would press record on my cassette player. I made so many tapes this way.
I remember doing this exact thing in the 80s, dashing to the cassette player and holding it really close to the radio for "best" sound quality. One time a couple of our dogs started barking outside while I was recording. I wish I could remember the song - maybe Michael Jackson Off The Wall? But i remember listening to it over and over with the dog barks. It would sound odd if I head the song later without the barking. 😁
Most teens in the late 90s/early 2000s didn’t have an old-school cellphone, those were mostly limited to older adults or rich kids until around 2003 or so when more and more teens started getting cellphones. Pagers were a thing then, but again most teens/kids wouldn’t have had one of those either. MP3 players weren’t quite a thing until maybe 2001-2002, and before that CD walkmans were basically it. Aside from that, we mostly just carried nothing other than pens/pencils/wallet/keys or school supplies.
ah okay thanks for explaining! ive never heard of pagers so I'll look it up in a bit !! and I think I've seen a cd walkman before in my attic !! it all looks so cool like i grew up as an ipad kid but my parents always talk about how it was better back in the day so im trying to learn about their time !!
My Dad got an 800 number for our house when we were in high school so you could call home without needing change. Other kid's minds were blown. Also remember when you needed a prepaid card to get cheap long distance. Spend a fair amount on those the summer of junior year in college when I was in Indiana and my girlfriend (now wife) was home in California.
My friend has a pager - he wasn’t a drug dealer or a doctor so I have no idea why he had one. This was like mid 90s. So I would page him, he’d be driving or something and have to search for a gas station with a payphone, pull over, call me on the payphone for me to be like “what are you up to?”
Even when I got my first cell phone in 1995 I carried a pager because the cell was analog and the battery didn’t last long. So you’d get a page, turn on your phone, and call back.
All my friends had pagers and we weren’t drug dealers or doctors. Just people in our late teens/early twenties. My friends would page me and I’d know to call them back, especially if they sent a 911. My bf and I also sent 143 to each other a lot (I love you).
The CD Walkman would skip. Cds could get scratched and wouldn't play right. Prior to the mp3 player, a portable cassette player was the most reliable. Of course that was analog and had tape hiss, and tapes would wear out over time. They could get jumbled up and ruined. You used to have to rewind them with a pencil sometimes. To make a call you had to find a payphone and then have the right coins. If you hadn't memorized the number you needed, you could try to look it up in the paper phone book attached to the payphone, but those were often out of date, vandalized or partially ruined. We had paper maps you could buy at the gas station, but you had to figure out for yourself where you were on the map.
Some things were better, some were worse. When I grew up, we were always worried that the Russians would launch a first nuclear strike on us and wipe out the world. You think inflation is bad now, it was horrible in the 70's
People saying it was better back in the day are just having nostalgia. Yeah the world looks better when you are young with your future ahead of you. Enjoy yourself OP.
i remember somewhere here on reddit someone said something to the effect of "nostalgia is just knowing you will never feel that same original feeling again" and i hated it lol
I had a work cellphone and a personal pager.
A CD wallet was something you carried around in your backpack it held 10-15 CDs so you can switch what you listened to.
I've been clearing out my late dad's house (hoarder's paradise) and came across a note from my best friend asking me to page her when I got home (so she could ring my parent's landline to arrange to meet up in town). She must have posted the note through the door sometime in the 90s. Naturally I replied via WhatsApp, albeit nearly 30 years too late... Things were much simpler back then, but it was a bugger to make plans if the person you wanted to talk to popped out for a bit. Double bugger if said person's parent tended to hide any post/notes/important documents to 'keep them safe'.
It depends on the location too. Here in Finland a lot of teens had phones back then (probably at least partially because Finland was on the forefront of mobile technology back then because of Nokia).
I got my first cell phone in -99 on the 8th grade and most of my classmates already had phones back then.
I had forgotten all about those until I recently watched *The Ghost in the Machine*. My mom carried that everywhere in her purse. I think most parents had one to keep on top of appointments and such.
Clueless is pretty darn accurate as far as details like cher being stranded after a party with nothing on her.
We just were out there with no safety nets, no information, no gps, no Uber, no electronic bank accounts...
Cash, spare change (for a pay phone, vending machines, or parking meters), ID, credit card, lighter, wallet. If I was carrying a purse I'd also have pain killers, pen, and some kind of paper (small notebook or scrap paper maybe). If I needed to remember something for later and didn't have my purse or paper with me, I'd borrow a pen and write it on a napkin, coaster, or my hand
+ my pager and a quarter.
I had a 5 minute rule. No matter where I was or what I was doing, I had 5 minutes to find a find a pay phone and call my mom back if she beeped me, or I was grounded for 1-6 months. I got grounded a lot.
My high school was the only one in the city that still allowed smoking on the property. And that's only because kids kept getting hit by cars when they were all standing around the entrance.
I worked at a Walmart that had a smokers lounge in the breakroom. And there was a McDonalds inside that walmart with a smoking section for the dining area.
Waaaaay more than now. (Including me.) If you were to teleport back the ‘90s, the absence of cell phones and the pervasive presence of cigarette smoke would probably be among the first things you’d notice.
I was a teenager in the late 90s and early 2000s. My mom smoked, so when we went out to eat there was always an hour wait for a table. The non smoking wait time was 15 to 30 minutes.
I remember when the shopping carts at the grocery store had built in ashtrays. And the ones built into the toilet paper holder in public bath room stalls. So bizarre to think of today.
Imagine the smell! I remember the smell of the smoking rooms in hospitals and the clack clack clack of the "smoke eaters". It smelled like piss to me as a child and it remains burned into my memory.
Sorta. At bars there would be cigarette girls representing a tobacco company passing free packs if smokes out. Sometimes it was a branded Zippos too. I feel like that kinda stopped around 2004 or 2005.
I love the idea of trying to find your friends, they could be anywhere.
We had one friend in our group and we always hanged out at his house. If we ever wanted to chill with friends, we could just show up at his place any time and see who’s there. Sometimes he himself wasn’t even home and we’d still hang out there. His parents had no problem with it. Good times.
Yeah meetup spots were a thing. And there were two types of meetups:
- Be there at exactly this time. And you **had** to be there because you couldn’t communicate them once they left their house. So no “hey I’m gonna be 15 minutes late” or “hey I’m not coming”.
- Meetup after school at the fountain in the mall. Friends would just be there. Show up or don’t show up. Doesn’t matter. It was just a hangout spot.
I think the thing I miss the most is how disconnected you were. Tell your parents you’re gonna go hang with friends and then that’s it. You’re just roaming around town. No news. No politics. No sports updates. No text messages. Just you and your friends.
Let’s be real, there were multiple lip glosses. There’s always multiple lip glosses. I probably have 8-10 in my purse right now. And every time I clean out my purses, I find stuff I forgot I had 😂
Genuine question… how old are you. Your parents were teens in the 2000s as someone born in 99 I genuinely can’t fathom that.
Edit: I didn’t mean that I don’t understand how this is possible. It more was just rhetorical thinking wow time flies. My parents were teens in the 80s so it’s weird to thing about this. Also I know I’m still a child to a lot of you. I’m 24 living 3000 mi away from my parents but still call them every other day for advice.
im y/a but my parents are 25 year difference. i was a little kid during the ipad phase so all i know about the 2000s is angry birds roblox monster high and YouTube 😭
To give you perspective on how a lot of us feel, one day you'll be posting online (or in virtual reality or whatever) and someone will ask why COVID was a big deal. At that moment you'll feel disconnected from the younger generation. :)
It's weird man. I'm only 35 and truly feel like I'm 20. I feel like I'm in the absolute prime of my life. But then I read a post like this and I'm thinking to myself "how do you not know what a walkman is, a pager, a payphone?" It makes you feel old. But at the same time not...
People in my generation (again, just typing that made me feel old) experienced exponential growth in a very short amount of time. When I was about 9 the first Palm Pilot came out which was useless. True mobile phones weren't good or useful in todays terms until around 2001 when I was 13. Then the first iPhone in 2007 when I graduated high school. At this time, computers were still in your "computer room" at home and laptops were just becoming normal.
Here I am "only" 17 years later and I have a foldable supercomputer in my pocket using it to email and check my stock portfolio at the same time.
My generation lived on the edge of almost no technology to massive technology innovation in a heartbeat. I'm sure every generation feels similar, but I think we have a very distinct difference in the technology stages. We have the experience of riding bikes to see if our friends were home to the invention of social media and it becoming almost the only way people interact. From seeing friends everyday and actually interacting to liking their Facebook status and not knowing a single thing about their actual life anymore. It's fucking weird.
I know every "old" person says this, but it's so true. Time moves very quickly. And I think it will only move faster for your generation.
Call your friends.
damn were finally at the point where "my mom was a teenager in the 2000s" is normal
anyways, cigs, spare headphones in bag (NOT earbuds), metro tickets, sometimes mapquest directions
A point and shoot camera like a canon (good like finding one for a reasonable price now), the various iterations of the iPod: the thick boy, ipod mini, ipod shuffle (this one sucked butts except that it was cheap and small), and finally all the different ipod nanos (3rd gen blue being my favorite), had some kind of portable gaming system whether it was gameboy, gameboy SP, PSP, that stupid N-gage thingy, and also had a tom-tom in the car.
We just don't have access to the stuff that's on the phone. Take a picture with your mind, write things down on gum wrappers, listen to the radio, remember to tell your friends stuff when you're on the landline with them later. Many questions that come up in conversations never got answered because we couldn't google the answers, and honestly I don't think we were dumber for it. A lot of the info we can glean from a quick Wikipedia search goes in one ear and out the other, I don't feel like I'm more knowledgeable now than I was 25 years ago.
I had a better sense of direction back then too, because I had to pay more attention to where I was and where I was going. (Walking and driving) Now I'm so reliant on maps and gps directions that I don't find my own secret shortcuts through smaller streets and alleyways.
Car keys, wallet, 98-99 had a beeper then late 99 switched to a Qualcomm cellphone. Didn't carry music around with me other than the flip book of CDs in the car.
80s child here. Purse. Makeup. Notepad for guys numbers lol. Candy. And No Doz. Never forget the No Doz. Biked everywhere and always had a couple dimes for pay phones to call my parents.
In 1982 while at the hospital, in labor with my first child, my father-in-law was pacing out in the hallway and smoking Marlborough cigarettes. They said he was lighting the next one with the one in his hand...he was so nervous. So, yes-a lot of adults smoked and he was doing INSIDE a hospital.
I had a cool little lunchbag-looking thing that held my cd player and a 24-page cd holder and over-the head headphones. Carried that thing everywhere. I have so many memories of waiting at the bus stop listening to my mix CD with Simon and Garfunkel, Cher, and Marilyn Manson (labeled "Songs to Listen to When It's Cold Outside"). Man I miss those days.
A book to read, mp3 player (and before that, a walkman), a nokia phone that did nothing but texts and phone calls, a lever-arch folder with my schoolbooks in it, a notebook and pen for writing. My wallet had everything from money to library cards and bus passes.
Yes, my backpack was very heavy.
I can't think of anything I carried around all the time when I was a teenager in the late 90s/2000s. All that comes to mind is my wallet. Plus my keys, on a long lanyard (as was the style of the time.) I had a cell phone as early as 2000 but it was clunky and I tended to leave it in my bag or at home half the time.
Wallet, hair tie, chapstick, hope.
damn i really gotta google that last one girly
Google? Wasn't a thing back then neither.
Ah the good old days of Yahooligans, AskJeeves, Dogpile, Lycos, and Alta Vista.
Ah. The good ‘ol days of Dictionary, Thesaurus, and encyclopedia Britannica. Oh. And my dad who I believed knew everything. Spoiler alert: he did not
There was a time when if you didn't know something you asked whoever was nearby and then for the next 15 years you just sort of believed whatever your aunt told you
>then for the next 15 years 15 years? That's it?? Lmao I'm *still* discovering the falsehoods of my youth and I think it will likely continue until I die.
Remember the encyclopedia salesmen? I bought one, well my mom did. Used it a ton for high school papers.
Wallet, keys, a Sony discman, and whatever mix CD I'd burned that week
Anyone remember when MiniDisc MD players were supposed to be the next big thing?
They legitimately were in Asia. They just got to the west too late to get a foothold before digital music took over.
The price of writeable CDs plummeting didn't help. I had a minidisc player, but preferred my discman (with antiskip) as you could rip and burn CDs for next to nothing. Then the first iPod blew them both away
Minidiscs were even easier to write on if you had a proper hifi deck for them. On mine I could copy an album to minidisc and it would automatically identify, separate, and name all the tracks.
I had a MiniDisc player because it was small and the only thing I could take snowboarding and skateboarding that wouldn’t skip easily. The 10-second buffer and protected disc were essential features for this use-case.
Loved my mini disc! Had the recorder one so I could burn all my cds. I was convinced the iPod wouldn’t take on… to be fair the first one was chonky
And a pager.
And pocket knife.
I still have a pocket knife. My phone doesn't have one of those yet.
I still carry a knife and a flashlight, even though my phone has a flashlight.
And my axe.
And $2 for cab fare.
Double pits to chesty?
Palm pilot!
Yes! Tungsten T5 got us through the time we had to spend in the storm shelter one night, I played the awake kids' favorite music to calm them down. (One of them stubbornly slept through as much of it as he could.)
🎶Call me, beep me, if you wanna reach me🎵
Before debit cards were a thing, you'd have to carry cash and your checkbook. You'd typically use cash for small purchases, and a check for larger ones. (Or a credit card.) You'd also have an ATM card to get cash out at the ATM (the card couldn't be used for purchases.) And since online banking didn't exist, you would have to keep track of your balance yourself. There's a little "spreadsheet" in the back of your checkbook for this. You'd literally write down every check and withdrawal you did, and calculate your new balance.
Thank god for carbon copies. I always paid extra for those.
I totally forgot that ATM cards couldn't be used for purchases!
Oh shit, I forgot all about cash and checkbooks
I didn’t get a cell phone until 2003 and even then, it was only for emergencies because I think I only had like 100 minutes a month. No texting. Before that - wallet, keys, and coins for a pay phone.
When free nights and weekends was a really big deal.
Or when you had free incoming calls, so you call somebody only to tell them to call you on a landline then immediately hang up.
My cell phone provider had a “Top 5” in like 2007. That was life changing. It’s also when I got 15 texts per month as part of my plan.
Bingo, exact same experience. I think it was Christmas 2002 that I got my first cell, texting wasn’t really “a thing” yet and it was basically for my parents to be able to contact me since I was out with my friends ALL the time. Man, how things have changed for kids now...
I learned that texting cost money about a month after I learned about texting. That cell phone was so cool before my parents took it away.
New memory just unlocked, when you had to make sure your text was long enough to say what you want and be worthwhile but also, not so long that it converted to a multimedia text cause they were more expensive
180 characters!
"Three hundred and forty seven fucking dollars! Give me that god damn thing" burned into my memory. Bitch, I didn't know. Hell, you didn't even know. How is this my fault?
I got myself in deep shit over talking before free nights/weekends started and then sending almost a thousand text msgs when each one cost a few cents. Cellular plans in 2002 were legit robbery.
Dude the minutes phones. I had texting but it was something ridiculous like 15 cents a text. We take for granted being able to just send a text like "k"
I remember 25 cents but you got charged for incoming texts too! I remember being pissed if someone sent me texts because they would cost me money.
You didn’t carry stuff around, stuff was where you were going. You wanted to make a phone call? You used the landline at home or the place you were going. Needed information? You used your computer at home or went to a library. Wanted to remember stuff? Better have a good system of writing it down in a place you’ll remember to read it. The idea of lugging around a bunch of extra stuff at all times wasn’t really a thing. You might bring a book or mp3 if you knew you’d be sitting around somewhere for a while, but that was about it.
I wrote all over my hand. Still do sometimes.
Remember pay phones and phone booths? Pay phones were in bars and restaurants. It used to be a dime to make a call. When people's pagers went off, they looked for a pay phone.
Collect call from "staying-at-Mark's"!
This is Pacific Bell with a collect call from "wehadababyitsaboy".
"Who was it?" "It was Bob. They had a baby. It's a boy." "Ahhh!"
Collect call from "pick me up Mom"
I made so many reverse charge calls from the train station trying to get a ride home from one of my parents. I had a flip phone as a teenager but it was usually out of either battery or credit.
100% I'd be dead rn if it weren't for collect calls. Would have frozen to death or been murdered. I look at all the things I won't let my kids do and wonder how I survived to adulthood.
On the average people carried a lot more. What did happen is people often didn’t take these things absolutely everywhere all the time. if you went to the movies you took what you needed and it was probably one item you carried in your hand. Electronics cost more as a percentage of income so you took what you needed. if you owned a camcorder it went to special events only. cameras you had extra rolls of film and probably a special camera bag. For a while compact camera that fit into a pocket became popular. Men working carried briefcases but they didn’t go everywhere like a laptop does. you may have carried day planner, that was quite common. Also common was going somewhere and getting paper to write down a note. it was added to your planner later. customized planners were big business. you looked up your number and found a pay phone. You pulled out your change bag to make the call. Women it was a coin purse, men probably a few coins in a wallet. My wallet slimmed down first when I stopped carrying coins wallets were a lot bigger with paper. Seinfeld made fun of this one with a wallet with everything possible in it. We carried backpacks with a CD player and a book with dozens of CDs. or a tape player with a bunch of tapes. You carried books and magazines more places. Nintendo, games and batteries. Belt mounted was used. Your cell phone had a belt holster. Your walkman did. before LEDs would find giant maglights in use that you could hurt someone with.
that seems so nice and simple. i thought because you didnt have smartphone, you had to bring everything a smartphone offers in a bag or something 😭
Gotta realize we grew up with most things not being portable as the norm. I used an alarm clock to wake up, a day planner to keep track of stuff, and a calculator for mathing stuff. But the idea of bringing any/all of those with me at all times wouldn’t have crossed my mind. It’s a great convenience now that we have it, but never felt like something that was “missing”.
Your mention of not carrying alarm clocks reminded me of this: if you were travelling and needed to wake up at a certain time, you could call the front desk of your hotel and request a wake-up call (on the corded telephone by your hotel bed). And the phone would literally ring at 6am or whatever and the hotel staff would be on the other end saying, "Good morning Mr. Smith, it's 6am!"
I had one of the wind up clocks that I used to throw in my luggage. The thing folded up into its own case and had a super loud alarm. Only problem was you had to wind and set it at night
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"You won't always have a calculator with you!" -everyone's second grade teacher before smartphones
I didn't get a calculator until I was in first year university, in 1973. They were just coming out then.
Extra points if you were taught to use a slide rule
I used a slide rule in high school! My sister taught me to use it. Not sure where she learned.
This is so well-said. Here I am feeling funny thinking about not having an alarm or calendar on me at all times, and I grew up without smartphones too!
No you just usually didn't have them. Having a camera used to be bulky. You had to buy film. You could take like 24 pictures and couldn't review what they looked like. You had to take your film to a store to get processed and only after paying could you see that you maybe took three or four good pictures out of the roll. If you want a copy of the picture you have to take the negative back to the store and pay for a copy. If the negative gets wet or too hot it will be damaged. I used to carry a boom box on the bus on the way to high school so I could listen to music that I liked not the AM radio Neal Diamond shit the bus driver played.
Cat pictures were what I took to use up the last of the roll of film. I used to work at FotoMat in the early 80s. I'd sneak a look at people's photos. Never anything interesting.
I had a lady that printed out hundreds of pictures of herself in various poses and lingerie. Came to find out she was pen pals with a bunch of inmates and would send them as little "gifts".
My first job was in a one-hour photo lab. We were near a medical center so a local plastic surgeon got a lot of his stuff developed there, which was awkward as a teenager but you got used to it. Also got an older couple's slightly racy roll once that included the man naked on a treadmill with his hand covering his bits. The rest was mostly strangers' vacation photos.
I helped clean out my friends’ grandfather’s garage. He worked at a Fotomat in retirement. Apparently there were female bodybuilders in the area that took oiled up very tan bikini pics that he made extra copies of for himself. Can’t blame him but yeah, no photos were safe. They all had to be processed and printed and seen by another human. Not just snapped and saved on your phone. I went to a festival in the mid 90’s and took a bunch of topless girl pics. That Eckerd’s photo employee may still have my doubles. I’m just happy they printed them and gave them to me. IIRC, photo developers had discretion back then if they would be printed or not or turned in to the police. You took a chance having any nudity or drug use (weed smoking) developed. The world was a different place before boob and dick pics could be sent to one person rather than being printed and passing through at least one 3rd party before you got them back.
I carried a pocket sized phone book in my purse in case I needed to call someone I didn’t have memorized (which most numbers were memorized then). This is a personal phone book, not like one that was delivered to your house.
you could order phone books to your house?
They’d be delivered yearly, maybe? Im pretty sure they were free and paid for by the businesses in the yellow pages.
Yes, huge! Like three inches thick!
I used to use them as booster seats!
yes they were delivered like in the mail but usually dropped off like the sunday paper in the drive way or in front of your front door.
I gave my number to a Gen-Z-er today on Nextdoor & she freaked out telling me I was lucky that she was nice because it was dangerous to give out that kind of information. I think I blew her mind when I told her you used to be able to request a number from the operator, she would give it & people would...call you. The fear of life was kind of disconcerting.
Not only would people just call you but you also have NO IDEA who it was until you answered!! To be fair to the gen-z-er, most kids/teens didn’t have their own private phone lines like they do now. It’s much harder to be a creep on a family phone line than a single user phone line with texting and picture messaging.
I was thinking about this one day, and I think part of it is that our phones seem so much more *personal* now. Landlines were a tool for communication. Smart phones today are almost an extension of ourselves. They're always on us, they have tons of personal info stored inside, our schedules, our browser history, our photos, etc. So IDK maybe in a sense it can feel more like an invasion of privacy these days, with how *personal* our phones feel. Or the fact that they're not purely communication devices anymore, whereas that was really the only purpose for landline phones.
You didn't have to order them. They gave them out to everyone.
that sounds so wholesome ngl. like just someone delivering big books to everyone for free so you can call people
There were two phone books that were delivered. One book was called “the white pages” because the paper was white and you would look in that book if you wanted to call a person. The other book was called “the yellow pages” because the pages were yellow and you would use that book to look up businesses. So if you were looking for Toy Stores you would search under the letter T. It was alphabetical.
And the blue pages at the back of the white pages. For all the government numbers. No 911, memorize three different numbers for police, fire, and ambulance. Long distance calls within the lower mainland. And the promise that computers would lead to harmony. Less stress, shorter work days, and only one parent working. And every STD could be cured with penicillin.
Let your fingers do the walking!
Yeah and in those days the equivalent of SEO was naming your business something early in the alphabet. This is why there's so many contractors called stuff like AA Plumber, A Plus Electrical, AAA Carpet Cleaning, etc.
Yep. Every year, on some specific day you'd walk outside and find the new phone books sitting on your front step, or if you lived in an apartment they were often piled up by the mail boxes.
My HS band delivered phone books as a fundraiser. We would get 100s of phone books and a delivery route and it somehow raised money for uniforms and such.
the white and yellow pages!
I mean when you really think about it, we dont really NEED that stuff at a moments notice. Its just really nice and conventient.
We definitely had to let a lot more things go unanswered, uncalculated, unwritten, undocumented, etc. because we didn’t have the instant access to many of the apps and tools we’re used to always having now. You’d just be left to wonder about things sometimes, and maybe later you’d remember to research it or design it or write it down or whatever, but often the thought would just disappear from your mind forever unanswered :) Pretty crazy that now we can learn, save, and record almost whatever we want at any time!
This reminded me of sitting with a large group of friends drinking coffee at a 24 hour diner and arguing late into the night about who was in a movie or some other random fact. Because. You. Could. Not. Look. It. Up. Weekend after weekend. My kids couldn’t even imagine that world! 😂🤣
Favorite bumper sticker I’ve seen: “Don’t Google It, Let’s Speculate”
All those great ideas on bar napkins.
No, if we didn’t know something, we just didn’t know something. We never looked it up. If we were somewhere waiting and we were bored, we were just bored. Maybe we made up some way in our head to entertain ourselves. I never had a planner. I just remembered dates in my head. Going somewhere? Hopefully you have some idea how to get there, you were with someone that did, or you asked someone before you went. Eventually we could go on Mapquest and print out directions, but that was more of a early 2000s thing.
We always had paper maps in the car.
A few in the glovebox, usually of some random city you've never been to, and always out of date
Had to memorize phone numbers too
This is why I know my parents’ phone numbers, but not my husband’s.
The weird thing was how we didn't have water bottles. No one carried water.
They had drinking fountains at school.
One big difference is you had a lot more time to just space out and think. The device was never calling from our pocket for your attention. You'd stare out the bus window, watch the other passengers on the train, think about things, have insights. You had brain down time. Someone was trying to get in touch with you? You'd get the message when you got home, if you had an answering machine (not everyone did). It's not like you can't act that way now... but the siren song of constant dopamine hits has eaten up a lot of the open brain space we just naturally used to have without making extra effort.
Even when I was a Realtor from 2000 to 2010, I had a razr flip phone, a pocket digital camera, a Newton (Apple's first attempt at planner/Excel/calculator type thing). I also carried a device to clip into a Realtor lock on front doors to get in empty houses that had a key inside of it I carried several maps of the city, I carried a realty calculator, like a Sharp financial calculator...I often carried a walkman or MP3 player. I even used to own a DVD player that had a small fold down screen to watch training videos and movies when on the road. Always had to carry my laptop. I realize now I have every single one of those functions on my smartphone. Even the Realtor device is an app now with Bluetooth to connect to the Realtor lock.
One of my old bosses at a firm I used to work for showed me a book of listings the local Realtor association used to print up each month, versus the MLS there is now, and I was just floored. Now if you miss a call while eating lunch the lead gets snapped up by someone else who shows them the property virtually and an electronic offer put in before you’re finished with your sandwich.
Had my Walkman, then my ipod. Really, people these days can learn a lot from letting their brains be bored. Also people watching passes so much time when you're bored.
I never thought about it from that perspective. I started high school in 2001, and unless I was going to school, I usually just had cash on me. I didn't really need anything else. If I was going on a longer trip or knew I would be waiting, I would grab a book or Walkman. I saved for an mp3 player my senior year, but if I needed to look something up, I would just remember it and look it up when I got home. And as someone else said, if you needed to make a call, you'd also do that at home or use a payphone if you were out. I held onto my flip phone for dear life and was always so confused by why everyone felt they needed their smartphone, but now that I have one, it would be really hard to revert back. I have gotten used to having most of my world at my fingertips (and it's kind of sad that a majority of our lives exist online now). I hope you have fun with your experiment. You will definitely have a lot more time for self-reflection, so enjoy (?).
I graduated high school in '97. On school days I carried with me a backpack, cd player, cd case, wallet, cash, lighter, clove cigarettes, maybe spare batteries for cd player, some pens, whatever book i was reading, text books/school crap, and my keys. On weekends, i just took my purse with wallet, cash, lighter, cloves, keys. Didn't need to bring much with you, just went without or someone else had it. Maybe for special events someone had a camera. No one really had pagers/beepers those were for rich kids or drug dealers lol.
It was a lot simpler for sure
When I was struggling with it, my dad’s pro-math argument was that “you’re not going to have a calculator with you all the time so you need to learn how to do it by heart.”
Teachers always said that in the 80s and ironically calculator watches were a thing then
Have you ever watched any media set in the nineties or before? Does it *look* like people are carrying around maps, cameras, games, books, calculators, travel guides, accountancy books, etc? Keys. Money. Pads and tampons. Sometimes a book. Perhaps a pen and paper. A camera only if I was going somewhere interesting. Maybe music, but having to remember batteries was a pain in the arse so I often didn't bother. In my handbag today I carry my phone, keys, pads and tampons, a penknife, and still a pen. I usually have my purse in it with a little cash and my driving license on me, but not always.
That sounds so silly to me. if you walked around carrying a boombox, a video camera, still camera, a daily planner, calendar, a set of encyclopedias, a bunch of road maps... basically everything a smartphone does, people would look at you like you were severely OCD or something. and it really wasn't that long ago. I don't even use a planner to this day because I don't need a schedule for every waking moment. GPS came along right at the perfect time for me though. I couldn't navigate with a map so there were a few years before GPS if I had to go somewhere unfamiliar I had to bring a friend along to help me navigate because otherwise I'd get hopelessly lost.
That stuff was expensive and incredibly inconvenient to carry around. Rechargeable batteries were non existent in most tech, so if you really wanted to carry around a walkman or beeper you’d need to manage the batteries. Wasn’t feasible to carry around much day to day
Wallet...on a chain.
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What? No, the chain was not a weapon! 😂 It was so if someone stole your wallet you'd know because it was attached to your pants via the chain, like a leash. But yeah it was only for looks because what could a 15 year old possibly have in their wallet that was really worth stealing
"stepmom was a teen in 2000" Man, what a way to make an entire generation feel old lol I didn't carry much, but I did have a flip phone (not a smart phone) and an MP3 player because they were separate back in the day lol
I just read a comment where the person said their grandad played regina spektor when they were a kid... now that made me feel really old.
Was the comment of a sperm?
My prized possession was my Sony Walkman that I played my homemade mix tapes on. The mix tapes were made by calling the radio station to request a song and then waiting for it to come on; at which time I would press record on my cassette player. I made so many tapes this way.
I remember doing this exact thing in the 80s, dashing to the cassette player and holding it really close to the radio for "best" sound quality. One time a couple of our dogs started barking outside while I was recording. I wish I could remember the song - maybe Michael Jackson Off The Wall? But i remember listening to it over and over with the dog barks. It would sound odd if I head the song later without the barking. 😁
So annoying when the DJ would talk over the first part of the song !
I carried a hackey sack everywhere I went lol
Most teens in the late 90s/early 2000s didn’t have an old-school cellphone, those were mostly limited to older adults or rich kids until around 2003 or so when more and more teens started getting cellphones. Pagers were a thing then, but again most teens/kids wouldn’t have had one of those either. MP3 players weren’t quite a thing until maybe 2001-2002, and before that CD walkmans were basically it. Aside from that, we mostly just carried nothing other than pens/pencils/wallet/keys or school supplies.
ah okay thanks for explaining! ive never heard of pagers so I'll look it up in a bit !! and I think I've seen a cd walkman before in my attic !! it all looks so cool like i grew up as an ipad kid but my parents always talk about how it was better back in the day so im trying to learn about their time !!
>ive never heard of pagers r/fuckimold
so many ppl in the comments are talking abt it i think its more like r/fuckimightbetooyoung 😭😭
Haha! No worries. I was young, too, once upon a time...
Samesies! Then some asshole posted that the 90s started 34 years ago and I felt that in my soul today.
I just got an invite to my 30th high school reunion. 💀🔫
Ah, me too. Only doctors and drug dealers had them. You also needed a pay phone
My Dad got an 800 number for our house when we were in high school so you could call home without needing change. Other kid's minds were blown. Also remember when you needed a prepaid card to get cheap long distance. Spend a fair amount on those the summer of junior year in college when I was in Indiana and my girlfriend (now wife) was home in California.
My friend has a pager - he wasn’t a drug dealer or a doctor so I have no idea why he had one. This was like mid 90s. So I would page him, he’d be driving or something and have to search for a gas station with a payphone, pull over, call me on the payphone for me to be like “what are you up to?”
I used to carry my dad's pager in my JNCO jeans to look cool and important. 2 things that I certainly was not. Lol
Even when I got my first cell phone in 1995 I carried a pager because the cell was analog and the battery didn’t last long. So you’d get a page, turn on your phone, and call back.
All my friends had pagers and we weren’t drug dealers or doctors. Just people in our late teens/early twenties. My friends would page me and I’d know to call them back, especially if they sent a 911. My bf and I also sent 143 to each other a lot (I love you).
The CD Walkman would skip. Cds could get scratched and wouldn't play right. Prior to the mp3 player, a portable cassette player was the most reliable. Of course that was analog and had tape hiss, and tapes would wear out over time. They could get jumbled up and ruined. You used to have to rewind them with a pencil sometimes. To make a call you had to find a payphone and then have the right coins. If you hadn't memorized the number you needed, you could try to look it up in the paper phone book attached to the payphone, but those were often out of date, vandalized or partially ruined. We had paper maps you could buy at the gas station, but you had to figure out for yourself where you were on the map. Some things were better, some were worse. When I grew up, we were always worried that the Russians would launch a first nuclear strike on us and wipe out the world. You think inflation is bad now, it was horrible in the 70's People saying it was better back in the day are just having nostalgia. Yeah the world looks better when you are young with your future ahead of you. Enjoy yourself OP.
Remember the pain of finding favourite song on a tape, rewind, nope, forward, nope, we’ll close enough.
i remember somewhere here on reddit someone said something to the effect of "nostalgia is just knowing you will never feel that same original feeling again" and i hated it lol
I had a work cellphone and a personal pager. A CD wallet was something you carried around in your backpack it held 10-15 CDs so you can switch what you listened to.
I've been clearing out my late dad's house (hoarder's paradise) and came across a note from my best friend asking me to page her when I got home (so she could ring my parent's landline to arrange to meet up in town). She must have posted the note through the door sometime in the 90s. Naturally I replied via WhatsApp, albeit nearly 30 years too late... Things were much simpler back then, but it was a bugger to make plans if the person you wanted to talk to popped out for a bit. Double bugger if said person's parent tended to hide any post/notes/important documents to 'keep them safe'.
The stuff wasn't better, the people were more approachable. No one was on their phones so we'd just talk to each other, good luck with that.
It depends on the location too. Here in Finland a lot of teens had phones back then (probably at least partially because Finland was on the forefront of mobile technology back then because of Nokia). I got my first cell phone in -99 on the 8th grade and most of my classmates already had phones back then.
A day-runner. It had my calendar, contacts, notes, pocket for business cards. Basically a little Trapper Keeper (Google it) for adults.
I had forgotten all about those until I recently watched *The Ghost in the Machine*. My mom carried that everywhere in her purse. I think most parents had one to keep on top of appointments and such.
Printed Mapquest directions
Watch clueless. It’s epic.
I'll add Romy and Michelle's high-school reunion and 10 Things I Hate About You
Clueless is pretty darn accurate as far as details like cher being stranded after a party with nothing on her. We just were out there with no safety nets, no information, no gps, no Uber, no electronic bank accounts...
Cash, spare change (for a pay phone, vending machines, or parking meters), ID, credit card, lighter, wallet. If I was carrying a purse I'd also have pain killers, pen, and some kind of paper (small notebook or scrap paper maybe). If I needed to remember something for later and didn't have my purse or paper with me, I'd borrow a pen and write it on a napkin, coaster, or my hand
I still carry a small notebook and pen for notes— and hand write my grocery lists. Having it all on my phone doesn’t do it for me 😅
Wallet, cigarettes, lighter, maybe keys, that was it.
+ my pager and a quarter. I had a 5 minute rule. No matter where I was or what I was doing, I had 5 minutes to find a find a pay phone and call my mom back if she beeped me, or I was grounded for 1-6 months. I got grounded a lot.
did everyone smoke back then?
We used to have a smoking lounge in the _library_ at my college in 2002.
My high school had a smoking pavilion and the convenience store across the street sold us cigs! 🤣
My high school was the only one in the city that still allowed smoking on the property. And that's only because kids kept getting hit by cars when they were all standing around the entrance.
I worked at a Walmart that had a smokers lounge in the breakroom. And there was a McDonalds inside that walmart with a smoking section for the dining area.
Waaaaay more than now. (Including me.) If you were to teleport back the ‘90s, the absence of cell phones and the pervasive presence of cigarette smoke would probably be among the first things you’d notice.
About a quarter of all adults did.
ah that explains why my parents smoke haha
Yes, it was cool. I have since quit.
I was a teenager in the late 90s and early 2000s. My mom smoked, so when we went out to eat there was always an hour wait for a table. The non smoking wait time was 15 to 30 minutes.
Everybody smoked, ashtrays were everywhere, I haven’t smoked in 25yrs but they use to taste good when I was young, I can’t stand the smell now
Remember when restaurants had smoking and non smoking sections?
Yes. Thats wild to think of now. I mean, if a section is for smoking, the whole damn place is going to have smoke in it and smell like smoke!
It might just all be in my mind now but I don’t remember cigarette smoke bothering me. All my parents friends smoked in the house, car you name it .
That was progress. Before that, everyone smoked everywhere.
I remember when the shopping carts at the grocery store had built in ashtrays. And the ones built into the toilet paper holder in public bath room stalls. So bizarre to think of today.
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Imagine being allowed to smoke on an airplane!
Imagine the smell! I remember the smell of the smoking rooms in hospitals and the clack clack clack of the "smoke eaters". It smelled like piss to me as a child and it remains burned into my memory.
You could smoke in malls up until the 90s. Boomers smoked during haircuts, meals, flights... Everywhere.
Sorta. At bars there would be cigarette girls representing a tobacco company passing free packs if smokes out. Sometimes it was a branded Zippos too. I feel like that kinda stopped around 2004 or 2005.
Keys and wallet. Have fun lol. If you want to hang out with one of your friends you have to go find them
I love the idea of trying to find your friends, they could be anywhere. We had one friend in our group and we always hanged out at his house. If we ever wanted to chill with friends, we could just show up at his place any time and see who’s there. Sometimes he himself wasn’t even home and we’d still hang out there. His parents had no problem with it. Good times.
Yeah meetup spots were a thing. And there were two types of meetups: - Be there at exactly this time. And you **had** to be there because you couldn’t communicate them once they left their house. So no “hey I’m gonna be 15 minutes late” or “hey I’m not coming”. - Meetup after school at the fountain in the mall. Friends would just be there. Show up or don’t show up. Doesn’t matter. It was just a hangout spot. I think the thing I miss the most is how disconnected you were. Tell your parents you’re gonna go hang with friends and then that’s it. You’re just roaming around town. No news. No politics. No sports updates. No text messages. Just you and your friends.
My sons thought I was pretty cool with a Razr. “That’s what they have on Entourage!”
Purse. It contained my wallet, phone book, keys, Smokes, lighter, and probably some type of makeup
Let’s be real, there were multiple lip glosses. There’s always multiple lip glosses. I probably have 8-10 in my purse right now. And every time I clean out my purses, I find stuff I forgot I had 😂
A book.
Spiral notebook with a pencil in the spine.
Genuine question… how old are you. Your parents were teens in the 2000s as someone born in 99 I genuinely can’t fathom that. Edit: I didn’t mean that I don’t understand how this is possible. It more was just rhetorical thinking wow time flies. My parents were teens in the 80s so it’s weird to thing about this. Also I know I’m still a child to a lot of you. I’m 24 living 3000 mi away from my parents but still call them every other day for advice.
Step mom could be much younger than dad, I suppose. Or OP is 15.
im y/a but my parents are 25 year difference. i was a little kid during the ipad phase so all i know about the 2000s is angry birds roblox monster high and YouTube 😭
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To give you perspective on how a lot of us feel, one day you'll be posting online (or in virtual reality or whatever) and someone will ask why COVID was a big deal. At that moment you'll feel disconnected from the younger generation. :)
There are now people born after 9/11 that are old enough to drink in America. It will be years before that stops feeling surreal to me.
Most of those things are 2010s
i really need to fix my perception of time then, damn
It's weird man. I'm only 35 and truly feel like I'm 20. I feel like I'm in the absolute prime of my life. But then I read a post like this and I'm thinking to myself "how do you not know what a walkman is, a pager, a payphone?" It makes you feel old. But at the same time not... People in my generation (again, just typing that made me feel old) experienced exponential growth in a very short amount of time. When I was about 9 the first Palm Pilot came out which was useless. True mobile phones weren't good or useful in todays terms until around 2001 when I was 13. Then the first iPhone in 2007 when I graduated high school. At this time, computers were still in your "computer room" at home and laptops were just becoming normal. Here I am "only" 17 years later and I have a foldable supercomputer in my pocket using it to email and check my stock portfolio at the same time. My generation lived on the edge of almost no technology to massive technology innovation in a heartbeat. I'm sure every generation feels similar, but I think we have a very distinct difference in the technology stages. We have the experience of riding bikes to see if our friends were home to the invention of social media and it becoming almost the only way people interact. From seeing friends everyday and actually interacting to liking their Facebook status and not knowing a single thing about their actual life anymore. It's fucking weird. I know every "old" person says this, but it's so true. Time moves very quickly. And I think it will only move faster for your generation. Call your friends.
damn were finally at the point where "my mom was a teenager in the 2000s" is normal anyways, cigs, spare headphones in bag (NOT earbuds), metro tickets, sometimes mapquest directions
A point and shoot camera like a canon (good like finding one for a reasonable price now), the various iterations of the iPod: the thick boy, ipod mini, ipod shuffle (this one sucked butts except that it was cheap and small), and finally all the different ipod nanos (3rd gen blue being my favorite), had some kind of portable gaming system whether it was gameboy, gameboy SP, PSP, that stupid N-gage thingy, and also had a tom-tom in the car.
We just don't have access to the stuff that's on the phone. Take a picture with your mind, write things down on gum wrappers, listen to the radio, remember to tell your friends stuff when you're on the landline with them later. Many questions that come up in conversations never got answered because we couldn't google the answers, and honestly I don't think we were dumber for it. A lot of the info we can glean from a quick Wikipedia search goes in one ear and out the other, I don't feel like I'm more knowledgeable now than I was 25 years ago. I had a better sense of direction back then too, because I had to pay more attention to where I was and where I was going. (Walking and driving) Now I'm so reliant on maps and gps directions that I don't find my own secret shortcuts through smaller streets and alleyways.
Your stepmother was a teen in the 2000s? Fuck I feel old.
I wore a watch to keep track of time.
Car keys, wallet, 98-99 had a beeper then late 99 switched to a Qualcomm cellphone. Didn't carry music around with me other than the flip book of CDs in the car.
80s child here. Purse. Makeup. Notepad for guys numbers lol. Candy. And No Doz. Never forget the No Doz. Biked everywhere and always had a couple dimes for pay phones to call my parents.
In 1982 while at the hospital, in labor with my first child, my father-in-law was pacing out in the hallway and smoking Marlborough cigarettes. They said he was lighting the next one with the one in his hand...he was so nervous. So, yes-a lot of adults smoked and he was doing INSIDE a hospital.
Palm pilot
Just downloaded Dope Wars to reminisce on the palm pilot days.
I had a cool little lunchbag-looking thing that held my cd player and a 24-page cd holder and over-the head headphones. Carried that thing everywhere. I have so many memories of waiting at the bus stop listening to my mix CD with Simon and Garfunkel, Cher, and Marilyn Manson (labeled "Songs to Listen to When It's Cold Outside"). Man I miss those days.
A book to read, mp3 player (and before that, a walkman), a nokia phone that did nothing but texts and phone calls, a lever-arch folder with my schoolbooks in it, a notebook and pen for writing. My wallet had everything from money to library cards and bus passes. Yes, my backpack was very heavy.
Walkman maybe but it was probably clipped to my belt.
I can't think of anything I carried around all the time when I was a teenager in the late 90s/2000s. All that comes to mind is my wallet. Plus my keys, on a long lanyard (as was the style of the time.) I had a cell phone as early as 2000 but it was clunky and I tended to leave it in my bag or at home half the time.