I read this post on Nicole’s blog the other day and it really got me thinking about how different it is to be a teenager today compared to when I was in high school. So, I shall now date myself a little bit and ramble on about how back in my day …

… you were pretty popular if you had Napster and would take burnt CD requests from friends and make them a mixed disc.

… instead of text messages, we used to write notes back and forth, folded up into fancy little squares. Our “text history” was a shoebox full of gossipy bits of paper.

… MSN Messenger was all the rage and we’d stay up ’til the wee hours of morning chatting with friends. Quite often it would be chatting with boys and finding out if they liked someone, while that person sat beside you.

… Having your navel pierced was one of the coolest things you could do if your were a girl, as well as getting a lower back tattoo. (I didn’t get either until after I graduated from high school.) For guys, it was all about the lip rings and tribal tattoos.

… Music videos actually played on Muchmusic and MTV on a regular basis. I would record my favourite music videos onto a VHS cassette so I could watch them on repeat.

… Some families had two home phone lines – one for them and one for the kids. If they didn’t, you can bet on a phone line being busy for hours between being on the internet (yay dial-up!) or talking to friends on the phone after school (even though you JUST seen them at school).

… Tommy Hilfiger was all the rage and almost everyone had at least one piece of clothing that was Tommy. (I had baggy jeans!)

… Girls would wear their boyfriend’s (or sometimes their crush’s) sweaters, jackets, or hats as a sign of “we’re together/he’s mine.”

… Getting a profile picture onto the internet usually involved some kind of shoddy webcam, a 1.5MP digital camera, or a scanner. We were much less aware of the rules of the “selfie” (clearly, because the term didn’t even exist back then.)

… My locker at school was plastered with photos of friends, magazine cutouts, and funky magnets. The more school photos you had of people, the cooler you were.We would spend entire lunch breaks decorating the doors of our lockers.

So, now you tell me – How did things differ for you back in the day?