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~inquiry

> I was a teen in the 90s,

Ahhh. Rough calculations have me imagining you were born just after I graduated from high school - although of course that education designation might sound meaningless depending on your locale (which I'm not remembering at the moment).

> but still look on it fondly compared
> to the following decade (which for me was just "Golden Age
> of the Internet" era)

One night in that era, while living in a bedroom at my brother's place (post divorce), I widened a search radius in MySpace to 250 miles, leading to encountering a couple females, one of which (unbeknownst to me) knew a male that my wife to be (who didn't know the other female at all) also know, found her through him, and then me through her. (see also: degrees of separation)

(FWIW, wasn't there a "tumblr" that was big in that era too? (suddenly grasping at hexadecimal straws, here...))

Not sure how I described the separation thing made sense. <enables single-digit degrees of teacher-esqueness> Let's see if we can ASCII picture it, shall we?

-<---------<---------<---------<---------<---------
|                                                 ^
|                                                 |
|      ---- J (female) ---- JP (male) ---- Wife (female)
|     /          ^
v    /           |
Me ->     (knew each other)
     \           |
      \          v
       ---- L (female) (created song I love about)

(Damn, creating that was fun!)

> I remember houses being relatively bare, with small furniture
> and large plants, and floral patterned dresses.

Bartender, can ya mix us up a coupla whatever further cultivates/coaxes childhood memories?

> Wish I knew what the pub culture was like back then.

Not sure I knew pub culture either. There was that one place that I frequented mostly, and then maybe two other lesser destinations. But the one loomed rather large.

But, oh, what I wouldn't give to once again wake up feeling reasonably normal after a night of pool, Guinness pints, and Camel straights....

Wait a second... the one of the two "lesser"... that was walking distance from the marital abode. There was an old woman regular there. I dropped her off at her dwelling one ight after some serious imbibation. Pretty sure she was Jameson on the rocks all night, and I'm pretty sure I mimicked her a la the (hello, Oscar!) "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" thingie. She was scary hardcore about her drinking, and I was merely young and capable (again, "feeling reasonably normal after").

She smoked Pall Malls one after another, if I'm remembering correctly... *damned* impressive to a young lad....

> One song that transports me back: Dream Academy's "Life in
> a Northern Town"
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UXnulANF8g

Oh, wow... I'd completely forgotten that one. Vaguely recall the video, especially the lead singer....

(sorry for the ellipses overdosing here, readers... but they go soooooo fucking well with wistfulness...)

> It makes my heart ache watching the scenes in that music video.

Gorgeous!

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~tetris wrote:

That is a truly excellent diagram hahaha, I wish more people would show the degrees of separation between them and their partners