to me, the "good old days" ended when i was around 10 years old. it just seems like the world went straight to hell then. sure, it could be me looking back on the past with rose-colored glasses, or the fact that i was oblivious to the big problems in the world, but here's what i remember about growing up.

• gas was $0.89/gallon (yes, i remember this!)
• i could roam the streets at night and not have to worry about being kidnapped and/or raped
• bubblegum was $0.05 at the amoco station and came with a fold-out comic inside
• there was actual good television on during primetime
• friday nights and saturday mornings had good shows
• it wasn't sex drugs and nudity on every channel
• disney stars were stars because they could act, not because they could sing and look pretty/cute/sexy onstage
• disney was zoog disney and had those awesome robot-looking people in the commercials (& the shows were amazing and had good actors!)
  • flash forward
  • lizzie mcguire
  • so weird
  • even stevens
  • the famous jett jackson
  • in a heartbeat
• NO REALITY TV (or at least very little)
• we weren't in an economic crisis and there were ads in the paper for decent, well-paying jobs
• $20 could buy you more than one decent shirt at the mall
• there wasn't the constant worry/threat of terrorism
• the music on the radio was worth listening to and not overtly about getting girls naked or doing drugs or being a slut, and bands like these were popular
  • savage garden
  • santana
  • no doubt (not gwen stefani)
  • rem
  • backstreet boys
  • n'sync
  • barenaked ladies
  • britney spears, before she went crazy
  • hanson! omg (:
• life was all carefree and fun and our biggest problem was that our president allegedly had an affair with his intern, not that there's some deadly flu pandemic and x% of americans are jobless and however many countries want to bomb us and so on and so forth...
• two sheets and a folding chair or two were enough to keep a kid occupied for an entire afternoon (by making a fort, of course)
• you didn't have to be suspicious of everybody
• the fashions were so easy to pull off, none of this immensely layered or super-tight ridiculousness
  • sweats
  • flared jeans & a tie-dyed shirt
  • slap bracelets
  • butterfly clips
  • fleece vests
  • cargo pants
• girls had normal haircuts and just pulled it up into a ponytail when it got annoying, unlike now where you have to spend like twelve hours battling with your hair for it to look halfway like the media tells you it should
• you were super cool if you had an email address, or if your parents let you go into the yahoo/aol chat rooms
• when the computers went all crazy at the millennium, even though it freaked us all out
  • i remember the computer at my after school care place reset its clock/calendar to 1957
• popular computer games were amazing, like
  • all the sim games
  • petz/catz/dogz
  • rollercoaster tycoon
• we amused ourselves with
  • pokemon
  • giga pets
  • pacman, the actual arcade game
  • mash, which never ended how we wanted it to
  • furbies
• zoom on pbs! they had the coolest projects and ideas and recipes and oh lord, how i wanted to be on that show
• the slang was sweet (:
  • dude!
  • dealio
  • whatever
  • all that
  • duh!!
  • as if
  • not!
• BEANIE BABIES