I love the '90s!

A few weeks ago, while I was home visiting my Dad in New Jersey, I did a little cleaning out of my bedroom closet. If you've got a minute, I'd like to take you on a little visual journey regarding some of the (many) amazing treasures I found.

Item #1, is this poster for Gund. Do you remember Gund? Are they still around? A quick check on the interwebs tells me yes - and have been since 1898 in fact. I remember getting this poster with my Mom and brother in a department store somewhere - it was a freebie giveaway the clerk let us have after we made our back to school purchases or some such thing. There were definitely a few choices in the give-away, all clever spins on the Gund name, featuring a cute and cuddly soft animal. Of course, I chose this one because I was obsessed with all things Gone With The Wind. I remember thinking, at the time, it was nothing but classic and literary. And then being sorely upset when I wasn't allowed to hang it in my bedroom for fear of poking too many holes in the wallpaper with thumbtacks.

As we move along in the early '90's, I'd like to showcase two phenomenal classic (and -ahem-rather phenomenally awful if listened to now) cassette tapes I discovered. I'll have you know I actually discovered a lot of cassette tapes. Cassingles even. And a Walkman.


The great thing about these tapes? I actually have a cassette player in my car so I was able to pop them in for a quick listen. Wow. I'd forgotten how...um, interesting early '90s music was with its crazy techno beats. Of course, I couldn't help but laugh listening to these tapes. What memories I have of my brother and I listening to these little gems over and over and over in our old family room. Did I mention there was dancing in that family room as well? There might have been dancing.

Let us move on to high school. Seeing as my Dad moved into this house when I was 15 I have approximately 8 million things tucked away here from my high school glory days. In fact, I'm still sorting out all the tokens and mementos I stowed away over the years. But for now, let me just show you this:

This, my friends, is the back of a long sleeved t-shirt. SAC (you say the letter aloud, not *ahem* the word it spells) was an organization I was very involved in during high school. It stands for Students Actively Concerned and I was even co-president of the group, along with my friend Meghan, during our Senior year. Every year, SAC would design and order a new shirt for the group, and of course wearing it around the halls of our school was - and I say this in all seriousness - the cool thing to do. (Really. One of the reasons I really, truly loved my high school as much as I did? Somehow, the faculty and teachers promoted a culture among the students where the more involved you were, the cooler you were. I don't know how they did it, but I tip my cap to them.)

But let's get back to this shirt. As I was saying, every year, the SAC kids got to design and print a t-shirt. What I would like to know, dear readers, is WHY IN THE HELL my dear friend Meghan and I thought that a CLOWN was a good idea for this shirt. And not just any clown. As my brother pointed out - it's a fat, slightly cross-eyed clown. Everyone and their mother knows that clowns are scary as all get out. And what kills me is that Meg and I - as the leaders of the group - approved and sanctified this God-awful design. Honestly, when I dug it out of one of my dresser drawers at Dad's the other day, I think I let out a yelp. It's quite possibly the most hideous thing I've ever seen. Oh but I kept it, of course. I mean, how could I not?

One morning, my Dad poked his head into my room and said, "you know, there's a whole bunch of your old dance costumes in my closet you should probably look at too." Before I could blink, he came back to my room with a huge stack of costumes draped over his arm. I'd long since assumed these costumes had been donated, so re-discovering them was a special treat. Of course, I did end up putting most of them in the Goodwill pile, with the hopes that some other young ballerina will find a use for them - or at the very least - they'll make great dress-up clothes for a little girl. I only kept one, the gold dress I wore for my Senior Solo ballet number. How could I ever get rid of that? Okay, okay. I kept two. The very last costume I ever wore - as a fiery red Phoenix - is also important to me. So there.

Do you know what I found at the bottom of this costume pile? My senior prom dress! I have to tell you, I have searched high and low for this dress for years. My Mom has a few of my formal dresses down in Georgia and I was always so confused about the fact that my senior prom gown wasn't among those hanging in my closet at her house. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out where or how it had disappeared. Well, mystery solved. I pulled my old dress out of the pile, and of course, it was exactly as I remembered it.

Friends. Let me tell you that I l-o-v-e-d my Senior Prom dress. It was very simple and utterly classic, with only a hint of mischief and sexy, given its sheer back. I remember clear as anything going to the fancy-pants King of Prussia mall with my Mom on a dress hunt that spring, and the two of us finding not one, but three dresses we liked. In an act of pure graciousness, my Mom let me buy all three to take home and think about, so long as I promised we would return the two I ended up not deciding to wear. And this probably sounds silly, but I remember trying all three dresses on over and over for different friends and family, always secretly hoping they'd chose the black one. I felt like such a grown up the night I wore that dress to prom! A long, sleek black cocktail dress? In my mind I had just taken a very big step toward the grown-up city girl I was so ready - at 17 - to be.

This flood of memories was running through my brain as I left my bedroom and the pile of dresses and costumes to take a shower. I got out of the shower, weighed myself on the scale in the bathroom, and shrugged my shoulders. Okay, why not? I thought. And then I did the thing that was either going to go very well or very poorly. I tried on the prom dress I'd worn just shy of 15 years ago.


Please ignore my sopping wet hair and glasses and sour puss face and note that at 32, I. am. able. to. wear. the. same. dress. I wore. as. a. 17. year. old. Let's celebrate. Pass the ice cream.

I had texted my brother earlier over the weekend, telling him about some of the things I was finding. At one point, he wrote me back and asked 'whatever happened to that Taco Bell dog you got as a gift?'

To which I replied: 'You mean this Taco Bell dog?'

This Taco Bell dog was a gift from a long lost boyfriend of mine named Jim. We started dating one summer during college, both of us counselors at the beloved camp I worked at for several years. The funny thing about the dog is that it was his one and only Christmas gift to me. Neither of us ever owned a Chihuahua, we shared no inside joke about Taco Bell, Chihuahuas, or any type of dogs at all for that matter. I was so perplexed by his gift, it became a bit of a running joke among my family and I, all of us trying to sort out what the "hidden meaning" could be. Did I mention it's a bobble-head? That makes it even crazier, right?

While my 32 year old self was impressed with my 17 year old self and the fact that I opted for chic and timeless in the prom dress department, when I discovered this next little number, I had to wonder what in the world my 19 year old self had been thinking. Let me go ahead and clarify that at least I never wore these two items together. Thank God for small favors, eh? I mean, snakeskin? And then more snakeskin? Was I planning on auditioning for a Def Leppard video or something? Although, kudos to me for fitting into that tiny blue top at 19. Let's just say that one didn't fit quite as well as the ol' prom dress did when I decided to try that one on again...

Aah, college.

This concludes our brief photographic tour down memory lane. Don't you wish we knew one another during our adolescence? We would have had a blast together. Pinky swear.