Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1999. What would that mean for you?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It would mean I’d be 19 again. It would mean I was still in high school. It would mean it’d be the last year of my life before everything went crazy.
I’d still be living with my father–who would still be alive, by the way. My brother would still look up to me and not yet be such a schmooze of a human being who now resides in prison for the next three years. I’d still be under 160 pounds, which would be amazing considering I haven’t been under 200 pounds since 2002.

It would mean my dog Bandit would still be alive, my ferret Snoopy would not have caught rabies yet, and I’d still know where by best friend of five years would be (right down the street).

It would mean I still wouldn’t have panic disorder yet.

And of course I’d be a virgin again.

2

It would mean I just got my degree in engineering and was getting ready to start my first real job.

3

It would mean my father would be alive or dead, depending on what point in the year we’re talking about. I’d still be early middle age, and we’d still be living in the 'burbs outside of Bangkok proper.

4

I would be 39 years old. I would be working at a factory called Guardian Automotive, a job I truly despised. I would have just bought my first brand new vehicle. I would have my first Papillon dog, Jay, who was my soul mate and will be missed forever. In November of that year, my other will die.

5

I was sharing an apartment with a friend on the east side of Denver, having moved there a year earlier after being laid off for the third (and last) time by the railroad I had been working for in my home town. I was at that point working for an obscure oilfield service company, doing a geology-related job that I was woefully unqualified for. Fortunately I managed to stumble through another year or so until I actually knew my ass from a hole in ground (literally, the ones being drilled by the rigs I was working on.

I had just bought a new Audi and had a on-and-off girlfriend that I really should have treated better. Regrets, I’ve got a few.

My life seemed considerably more open-ended then than it does now, of course.

Uh, this was all 1982, when the album came out, not 1999, actually.

6

I didn’t party much in 1999, it was the year I got two babies within six months of each other.

7

My father would die after nine years with muscular dystrophy, which means I no longer need to be his caretaker. Unfortunately, I still have to be a caretaker for my mother, who had a serious stroke three years before. I’m still her caretaker today.

I’m really tired of my life right now. Can’t do much more than I am doing right now though.

8

I’d be forty-five again, at a big party my sister held. The fireworks would be going off like there was a war out there, and it would be my birthday.

9

1999 doesn’t really stand out in my memories in any way. I don’t think anything much happened.

10

I was 20. I didn’t make much money, but I didn’t need anything. And it was the last time I had a meaningful sex life. So, I guess that would be a pretty good time.

11

I was still in private practice, visiting SDMB but not bothering to sign up yet. The guy I rented my farmhouse to was preparing for Y2K and trying to convince me to do the same. Unbeknownst to me, he was burying dozens and dozens of 5 gallon buckets of various dried foodstuffs in the corner of my barn for the coming end times (I discovered this last year, when that corner of my barn turned into a bog).

Life was pretty good at that point. I’d adjusted to the early deaths of my parents pretty well by that time, though my medical group was not on solid financial footing. That was an ongoing worry.

12

I was young with a baby and a toddler and about as broke as I think we’ve ever been. Husband was just starting out in his career and I was staying home with the kids. There was not much partying going on, but we were happy.

13

I would be 30, single and living on my own in Winnipeg. I had my first job in nursing and although I wasn’t probably cut out for surgical nursing, I hadn’t painted myself into a very narrow alcove, career wise. In 1999 I swapped a shift on the night of Y2K to get an extra day off and drive home on Christmas day and not go back until Dec 29th. I didn’t know it then but it was the last Christmas my brother parents and I would all spend together in the house in Thunder Bay that we all consider home. (my parents and brother are all still alive, just Christmases since have never either been there or included all of us) Within 6 months I would have planned to move out to Vancouver for my future ex husband.

I wish I had done some things differently, but I have a son who is a result of the marriage and the mistakes, and he’s the best thing in my life, so… its ok.

14

I would be two, so I don’t think that I did too much… I probably just slept and did silly kid stuff.

15

I’d be 15, or 14 before March 14, and either living in either Worthington, MN, or, after the summer of 1999, Havre, MT.

In Worthington I would have been living with my family in a two-story rented house, not far from the loft apartment we lived in for a few weeks in the summer of 1998, when my mom and my two brothers moved to Worthington from Poplar Bluff, MO, to join my dad, who had moved there after quitting his job to get what we all thought would be a better one. Not long before we moved, he had mailed us a tape of the first episode of a TV series called “South Park” which none of us had heard of and which wasn’t on any of the channels we got on cable.

Anyway, we failed to find a reasonable permanent house in Worthington, which wasn’t such a bad thing after all because the job wasn’t so wonderful either. So, after looking at a job in Worland, WY, closely enough we all actually visited the place, my dad, under some pressure from my mom, a Montana native, decided to take the job in Havre.

We lived in a hotel for a while in Havre, but we quickly found a triple-wide mobile home on a cement pad a mile or so south of town and we’d moved in to that by the time the school year started. 1999-2000 was my sophomore year of high school, but the first year I actually went to a high school building: Worthington High School was so overcrowded they held freshman classes in the Worthington Middle School. It was almost as anticlimactic as the winter of 1998-1999, which was rather mild in Worthington.

Living in Havre comprehensively cured me of any desire to wish for a “real” winter.

(None of the town names were changed, BTW; none of you know where they are, anyway.)

16

I’ve never been much of a party person. I usually listen to music, chat with a few people, and generally be a wallflower. I do get a kind of vicarious enjoyment out of it, if there’s a generally upbeat and happy vibe. 1999, though…I mostly remember being tired that year. Long hours at work, long hours at the dojo. My social life was beginning to revolve around gaming again, after several years of no social life at all, which meant parties tended to be gaming gatherings with people who were about as good at partying as I was. LAN parties were a thing, card parties were usually Magic.

The song makes me think of New Year’s Eve, though. Those parties were the worst for me, for personal reasons. It would have mostly been a display of my acting talents, pretending to be happy so as not to ruin it for everyone, while really wanting to go crawl in a hole and hide. In hindsight, it was getting better, but in 1999, New Year’s still hurt like hell.

17

I’d just moved to Australia and tried to restart my life. I succeeded for a while, too. Things went moderately okay through 1999, improving each year until 2007 when it all went pear-shaped.

I also made a lot of new friends that year, many of whom are still amongst those who I see irregularly.

All-in-all it was not too bad a year to relive, with some low parts here and there.

ETA: Oh, I turned 30 in October 99.

18

You are a few weeks younger than I. My birthday is in September.

19

In 99, I was 24, still raving, and in fantastic physical shape :slight_smile:

20

I was 11 years old, turned 12 that October. 6th-7th grades. I remember being deeply concerned about Backstreet Boys vs. 'N Sync and extremely angry because my parents wouldn’t buy me a Discman and some stupid overpriced Abercrombie & Fitch pants with a stripe up the sides. By objective standards, I had it pretty good and was free to be consumed by those petty worries because I didn’t have anything actually bad in my life, but I have no real desire to return to those days. Being a tween sucks. I think ages 11-14 were the worst.