If you weren't already heading to the mall with your friends, you'd agree to meet up at a particular time and spot. Truly, you just trusted people to show up.
You always carried around change in case you needed to use a payphone if you were out. As I said before, a lot of teens didn't have cellphones, and if you, for example, wanted your parents to come pick you up from the mall, you needed to make sure you had change to call them.
You waited in long lines for popular movies. There was no assigned seating, so if you and your friends wanted good seats, you'd have to wait in a line before being let into the theater (sometimes the wait would be almost as long as the movie itself).
You wrote out invitations and then handed them to your friends at school if you were having a more "formal" party. This was also super awkward if you were handing them out in front of classmates you weren't inviting. As my coworker Andy put it, "Yeah the hand-delivered invites always had a very 'and none for Gretchen Wieners' vibe."
You had to research schoolwork in encyclopedias and books in the library. And there was no worse feeling than getting late to the library and finding out that someone else had already checked out the book you needed.
You had to make sure you got to the video store early on Fridays if you and your family wanted to rent the newest movie released. They'd run out of copies if it was a popular movie, and it wasn't unheard of for people to drive from store to store trying to locate a copy.
You or your parents would "special order" something if the store didn't have it in stock. Basically, the store would order it directly from their headquarters and have it sent to the store; they would then call you when it arrived (usually a week or two later).
Back when you couldn't buy everything online.
You burned CDs for every occasion and then carried them around with you in cases that looked like this.
You had to call and actually talk to someone on the phone when ordering pizza and then had to wait around for them to show up. Listen, I am not saying that doesn't happen today, but back in the day, you didn't a contactless delivery option, and you couldn't track where your order was.
You would pick out clothes from a catalog — and either mail in the order form or call and place your order with a telephone rep.
You learned not just about celebs but also about the latest trends, makeup tutorials, and hairstyles from magazines. Yeah, they came with step-by-step instructions on how to do the hair and makeup.
And lastly, you didn't have or take photos of everything you did. First, you'd have to carry a camera with you all the time. Second, photos were expensive to print, so you really didn't waste taking pics of moments that didn't matter.
• Don't insult other visitors. Offensive comments will be deleted without warning.
• Comments are accepted in English only.
• No swearing words in comments, otherwise such comments will be censored.
• Your nickname and avatar are randomly selected. If you don't post comments for 7 days, they both are reset.
• To choose another avatar, click the ‘Random avatar’ link.
Yeah it's going backwards now. stores aren't 24,7 and online doesn't have "everything" or as much 2 day shipping anymore.
The best part was none of the girls had penises.
Hahahahahahahahahaha!! Parents picking us up at the Mall? On what planet did this happen?