Recently, I’ve seen a lot of Facebook posts that indicate how many years ago a movie or TV show appeared. I usually look at those and think, “What? That can’t be that long ago!” As somebody put in a post, 30 years ago feels like it should be in the 1970s.
But it isn’t. And 20 years ago should be the 1980s. But it isn’t.
Twenty years ago it was 1998. The new century was looming, along with the threat of Y2K. Bill Clinton was in his second term as President of the United States. Al Gore was his Vice-President and had long ago invented the Internet and was working on solving climate change. (I’m still waiting for someone to invent a sarcasm font.) Of course, Monica Lewinsky was an important part of the White House picture as well.
Did you own a Furby? These creepy-looking, beaked, fuzzy toys were a huge hit in the marketplace and a must-have for kids that year. I’d guess many of them are now rotting in landfills across the nation.
If you were a woman who was trying to impress, you likely tried to have the “Rachel” haircut, named after Jennifer Aniston’s character on the popular TV show Friends. Her haircut changed from season to season, so ladies were forced to rush out and make a change every September.
Britney Spears became the hottest pop sensation in the singing world. Teenagers everywhere bought her CDs and wanted to be like her. What were they thinking? On the other end of the singing spectrum, Frank Sinatra finished doing things his way and passed on from this mortal coil.
The Euro was accepted as the currency in most of Europe in 1998. Microsoft became the largest company in the world that year, valued at $260 billion. And Google was founded. That was before anyone used it as a verb since there were many, many search engines out there.
Gas cost an average of $1.15 a gallon, less than half of what you’ll pay today at the pump. Some people were still steaming about paying more than one dollar a gallon! An average car cost a little over $17,000. A stamp was 32 cents and a pound of ground beef was about $1.40.
The Winter Olympics were held in Japan. It was the first year snowboarding and women’s hockey were part of the Olympics. Curling made a comeback that year, and everyone in Minnesota who paid attention to the last Olympics is glad! The Michigan Wolverines were national champs for college football, while the Denver Broncos beat the Green Bay Packers in the Super Bowl. Mark McGwire broke the home run record and the New York Yankees won the World Series. Kentucky won the NCAA basketball tournament before the Chicago Bulls won their third NBA title in a row.
The biggest movie hits at the box office included Godzilla, Armageddon, and Saving Private Ryan. (You might consider that I listed them in order from least to best as far as quality. Or maybe you thought Godzilla was a cinematic masterpiece.) Also, Titanic raked in the Academy Awards with 11 Oscars. I still have never watched it; I know how it ends – a ship sinks.
My students that year kept after me to see the sinking boat movie. I was supposed to take my girlfriend since it was so romantic. We actually thought about going once, but the line was way too long, so we rented a different movie instead. That girlfriend became my wife in 1998, and I’ve figured that I’m a bigger winner than Titanic because of that.
That’s right. Michelle and I have our 20-year wedding anniversary coming up. Those two decades seem like they should be a long time, but it really hasn’t been that long. When you meet the love of your life, time flies. It only seems like a really long time when you look back like we have earlier in this column. Michael Jordan and John Elway were elite athletes. People cared about the music of Marilyn Manson and the Spice Girls. Buffy was slaying vampires and Jerry Springer was dodging thrown chairs.
China is the traditional gift for twenty years of wedded bliss and platinum is the modern look at things. We don’t have fancy dinner parties enough to care about the china we got for our wedding, much less adding to what we already have. And I have a platinum credit card – does that count?
The sun shone brightly the day we were married out at Litomysl. It has continued to shine all these years later. That’s not to say there is never a dark cloud. All relationships and all lives have a storm roll through from time to time. And it’s how you deal with the thunder and lightning that helps strengthen that relationship. If you have an umbrella with you, you don’t get as wet. The tools needed to drive away the storms in life are vital in a marriage.
Michelle and I have had many more sun-streaked days than otherwise. We build on our love for each other and try hard to set a good example of how a positive relationship works for our children, so that when they go out in the world and meet people, they can also find that love and caring and start their own families through that love and caring.
Happy anniversary, my lobster! Here’s to many, many more years of us!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is eiron, which means a person characterized by self-deprecation, as in, “The husband knew how to be an eiron and not take himself too seriously around his wife.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!