I turned 22 in 1996. I was at UC Berkeley finishing up my degree, I was in the best physical shape of my life, Clinton was president, all I did was study, party and do martial arts and bicycle.
It was awesome.
Sorry.
I was 22 in 1992. I had just gotten out of SIU and was back in Chicago trying to figure out what I wanted. 1992-1995 were my “lost” years. I had a pretty good time, lol.
I have always thought it would’ve been cool to have been a young adult in the late 40’s and to have been at the Savoy seeing the jazz greats. The problem is it would suck to be a minority in that time, plus I probably would have served in the war and had my ass shot up. :smack:
Well, I’m 23, but my real ‘formative years’ were about ten years ago, and I’m okay with how it worked out. Now I basically ignore the parts of culture I don’t like. Back then, when I was more directly influenced by it, there was a lot of mind-numbing stuff around, but that’s not all there was. Celebrity culture wasn’t as rampant and monopolizing. There was the internet, but no idiotic netspeak. No one spelled ‘a lot’ “alot.”
I think it would have been pretty cool, or valuable, to have lived through some of the things that went on before I was born, but by and large I’m pretty happy with where I’ve been placed in history. I see friends who are just reaching 18 and man, do they seem different. And not in a good way.
I am a little bit detached from my age group, though, so maybe I can’t speak well on the subject.
I was 22 in 1991 in the middle of the “four year hole in my life”. I was in the Navy. Something I think was the best thing I ever did for myself but missed what most of my peers did, going to college and partying and learing a lot of social skills.
I’d maybe like to do it again but this time go to school and try it the other way. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
As far as a different era it’s an interesting question. I’d love to have been junior Officer in the British Navy in the Victorian era. Sure there was scurvy, brutal treatment and the chance of death and dismemberment but I’d love to know what things were like then first-hand.
I was 22 in 1981…I was doing my student teaching, waiting tables, partying, and enjoying the music of the day. MTV had just started. I was in love with my college boyfriend. Life was good. I wouldn’t change a thing.
I was 22 in 1962, in Dallas, Texas. I don’t know that I’d change the date, but I often wish I had lived in a more enlightened place.
I moved to Santa Cruz, CA in 1963.
Sherman, set the wayback machine for 1996… We’ll see a 22-year-old Polekitty wishing he had been born just a few years earlier so he didn’t miss the beginings of hacker culture.
Back in 2006, I’m quite pleased I never had the FBI come bursting into my room and stealing all my 5 1/4" disks…
I am 22 in 2007.
I couldn’t have picked a better year to be born.
Normally it isn’t, but at 22 I had a family to support. Not that I’m complaining, I still have the same family 26 years later. If I could have known at 18 what I know now, we would have waited. 
If I’d been born in 1881 instead of 1981, I would have been 22 in 1903, and would have been able to travel the world as it was then, writing articles for newspapers about strange and exotic lands, and probably getting in a spot of Tiger Hunting while I was at it.
I’ve often said that if I was born 100 years ago, there’d be a river in Africa named after me (or better yet, a large town or city).
As it was, I was 22 in 2003. Nothing special or notable happened, and so I’m continually left with this feeling that most of the really cool stuff has already happened, and anything that will happen will involve people richer or luckier than I… 
Damn our late tickets!
I turned 22 in 1975. The music was crap but the era was OK. Apart from the fact that it’d make me even more senile now, I’d have liked to have been born a few years earlier. I often felt as if I missed out on a lot of the sixties/seventies fun.
My younger son turns 22 this year. I wouldn’t be his age for quids.
I turned 22 in 1976, and before that year was out, I was back in college starting work on my engineering degree. While I was in college, the price of gasoline shot up to almost 75 cents a gallon!!! :eek:
Anyway, for the longest time, I felt like I was born 20 years later than I should have been. I always felt more comfortable with my mother’s contemporaries than my own - at least when I was in my teens and early 20s. Fortunately, that feeling passed. All things considered, I’m glad I got to live through what I did when I did. No matter which era you pick, there’s great stuff and bad stuff. Being plopped down in any time and situation is difficult, but when you grew up in it and it grew around you, your perspective is altered.
My only regret from my early 20s is that I didn’t develop better habits of saving money and taking better care of myself…
I’m really happy to see that you think it was great to be 22 in the late 70s and not the late 60s. It’s so much better to wish to live in a perfect world than one in which people die. :rolleyes:
I was 22 in 1983. We had Reagan instead of Bush and if you think that was an imporvement it’s because you weren’t there. We also had characters like Thatcher and John Paul II running things and trust me they weren’t as great in power as their reputations would make them seem afterwards.
Terrorism was around back then; admittedly it didn’t seem like a significant threat to most Americans. But we had the Cold War - the world was divided in to two halves and both had the capacity and the desire to obliterate the other at a moment’s notice. It was sort of like having an Al Qaeda suicide bomber driving in circles around your house all the time.
As for popular culture, the top TV shows in 1983 were Dallas, Dynasty, and Falcon Crest - we were watching soap operas. In music, we were listening to Duran Duran, Genesis, and the Police. In movies, we were watching slasher horror films, teen sex comedies, mindless action movies, and complaining about how George Lucas was trashing the legacy of his early work.
Okay, movies haven’t changed much.