Remembering the year 1999

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It's hard to believe that 1999 was 18 years ago now. So, I thought I'd take a thread to share your memories of that year.
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It's funny that I'm old enough to remember that the year 1999 was considered far off into the future. But for me, the real 1999 was a fairly good year for me.

I had moved from a larger town, to a smaller one on an island, and I was upset about the move then (I'm older now, and find my hometown alright). What helped me cope with the move was watching repeats of Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs. At the time of the move, I also got into Pokemon when it first hit stateside the previous year. I also came across a German news channel named Deutsche Welle, and recorded their newscasts on VHS alongside the aforementioned two shows.

At the start of the year, I was in 6th grade. It was a fractured year, but many of my new classmates in my class go to know me for my wacky personality. I asked to go out in style on the last day of school that year, with "Johnny has left the building" as I left the school for the last time.

Also that year, I found at my local Safeway a VHS tape of the 1986 New York Mets' theme song "Let's Go Mets!" and bought it. I became hooked and wore out the darn tape because I watched it so many times! (I was into football earlier in the year.) Which brings me to the next part of this story...

In August of 1999, I spent two weeks in New York City (to see my uncle, who lived in the area then), and buoyed by my love the Mets, saw one of their games at the now-demolished Shea Stadium. There are certain areas that I remember vividly in my life, even in my younger days, and this is one of them: The game I saw took place August 6, 1999, and the Mets played the Dodgers, and the Mets won, 2-1. I was so elated. The Mets would reach the playoffs, only to fall short in that year's NLCS against the Atlanta Braves. But that 1999 Mets team.... that was one helluva rodeo for them.

The second half of 1999 had me in 7th grade and in middle school. The school assigned me a para-educator assistant, a woman named Kim to help me get through this new school of mine. I can't remember what happened in that second half of the year, but bigger and better things would lay ahead of me in the new year/century/millennium that was to follow.

Lastly, 1999 was also the year that the U.S. said "Hello" to both Digimon (the anime) and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? These two shows, for my 12 year old self, were required viewing, and the former show has had a good-sized following, with many spin-off series made (and a few sequel series to the 1999 anime, too), and the latter show becoming one of the most captivating TV show in quite a while, with its high stakes and intensity.

That was my 1999........ tell me your 1999 story.

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LIONS-STAMPEDERS-ELKS-ROUGHRIDERS-BLUE BOMBERS-TIGER-CATS-ARGONAUTS-REDBLACKS-ALOUETTES

The Canadian Football League - What We're Made Of

Feel free to talk to me, if you wish.

Every day is a gift- cherish it!

"A true, true friend helps a friend in need."

The year I got and lost my first job and had my first breakdown. Year of first kiss and then was never kissed again. No one ever told me they loved me ever again. He was a liar and probably a narcissist, but even so. I didn't know life was going to turn out like this.

18 years on and life is no better. In the midst of another breakdown. Still alone.

I miss ankle length A-line skirts. Paired up with a fitted ribbed cardigan, that was my 90s look. when are those skirts coming back?

I also miss being thin.

I was born in 1999.

Riding my 1999 YZF-R1 like a bat out of hell! Good times.

I have no memories of that year because I was only 1 year old.

So many years we partied like it was 1999 we didn't know what to do when it turned 2000.

I honestly can't remember much of it. We'd moved into a new school building the previous year and I was discovering the joys of the internet due to the brand new (Windows 98!) computers in the library. I had been into Star Wars since the 1997 rereleases and saw the Phantom Menace. I actually thought it was good but I was only eight. Yes, I liked Jar Jar. I was also big into WWF at the time and will always remember waking up one Monday morning to go to school and my brother telling me Owen Hart had died on live TV.

The second half of the year I first started to hear of a game called "pock-mon" and dismissed it as a load of rubbish.

How wrong I was.

The Pokémon anime debuted on ITV and Sky One around August and I was quickly hooked. I fell in love with Team Rocket and especially their shadowy boss Giovanni. I wanted a Game Boy Color and Red because Arcanine was in that version and I got them for Christmas.

So basically it was the year my lifelong love of Pokémon (and Team Rocket!) started.

August 18, 1999-I lost my Siamese cat, Samantha, who lived to be 20.

October 21-I began work at my local newspaper, where I worked until 2001.

I remember exactly how it started: About 15 minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve I arrived in Rome on a train from Brindisi. As the hour struck, I was making my way through some very narrow streets, having no idea where I was going, and the Italians started throwing firecrackers out their windows. Rumors were spreading through the crowd (no doubt, for the benefit of tourists) that the Mafia were firing off their guns. The day before, in a move made never in my life before or since, I had started talking to a couple of strangers who were also Americans, and we had continued talking on the train. I went with them to a Chinese restaurant (the only choice at 1 am on New Year's Day in Rome), then we went to a hotel, smoked a bidi (cheap Indian cigarette), and slept like the dead. I wouldn't mind being 20 again.

I remember when the very first Mario party game was released and oh boy did our hands always get sore when we had to rotate the joystick around and around.

I remember when our local radio station kept playing the U2 song "Sweetest Thing"

I remember when I saw my psychologist briefly and then I was supposed to see another doctor who was going to be coming to my house and then we all go to Missoula together but that month comes and it gets towards the end of the month so I ask my mother when that was going to happen and she told me it's not going to happen because she called it off and told me it was the psychologist who set it up. Mom also told me she wasn't the right therapist for me and she didn't understand me and didn't know what Asperger's was so she thought my parents knew nothing about it. Apparently this other doctor knew about it and I was going to get retested again for it or educate my parents about it but I am not sure and to this day I am still not sure what exactly happened but I have a feeling there was more to the story than what my mother shared with me at 14.

We also went back to Oregon so my dad could do the Hood to Coast thing with his friends and he had his brother go along so he could watch us and take us to the coast and meet him there where the race would end but I learned the hard way he was verbally abusive and short tempered and I never wanted to be around him again.

April 18th 1999 was when my cat had kittens and I didn't even know she was pregnant until she was having them and her brother was the father of the kittens. My parents got them spade that same year so there wouldn't be anymore kittens.

My cat that had kittens also disappeared that same year and that was also the same year my dad shot Fat Cat (not ours but I think he was left behind by our previous renters) because he was harassing our cats and they were all afraid and my cat was putting her kittens under the garage to protect them from Fat Cat and he would also hiss at my mother every morning while she would go to her car for work. My brothers buried the cat but other wild animals unburied it and ate the body so all my brothers found was the jaw but the rest was gone.

That was also the year we went to Canada for Christmas shopping but we didn't do much up there because the towns were small and their mall sucked in Cranbrook.

I remember seeing the big New Year's celebration in London on TV on New Years Eve for the new Millennium.

I remember when Burger King opened in our area for the very first time (but sadly closed two years later so no more Burger King in our area and the closest one was an hour away)

I remember when the Burger King Big Kids Meal first came out and their first toys were Wild Wild West. I even remember the very first commercial about it. That was even my first meal at our local Burger King that had just opened that day for the first opening.

I was only in middle school in the year 1999 and it was our first year living in Montana and living the country and small town life so we didn't have Blockbuster or Hollywood video or any other chain restaurants except for McDonalds and A&W and Pizza Hut and we did have Safeway but we didn't have very many chained stores nearby but we had Wal Mart and everything else was local business and no one dressed up for school dances and no one dressed nicely and people didn't lock their cars or their homes. If we wanted to do any real shopping, we had to drive an hour to a nearest city for shopping or for a real movie theater or drive three to five hours to a closest bigger city for real shopping where there was more stores and more people. Also all the kids rode the same bus together, elementary, middle school, and high school because it was such a small school and small town and the bus ride would be over an hour long each way so our parents always took us to school and we would ride the bus home because our house was always the first stop so it was only a 15 minutes bus ride. The middle school and high school also shared the same gym, same band room, same choir room, same lunch room, same Spanish teacher, same track field, and same ISS room and even the elementary school kids went in that room too for ISS. Also kids wandered around town by themselves.

Right after my birthday we went on a few day trip in Montana and we went to some towns and we stayed at a hot spring and we also visited some battlefield and that was also the same year I was introduced to blonde jokes and I got hooked on them and obsessed and I learned the wheelchair joke from my mom's brother.

We also went to Spokane that year for Christmas shopping because it was the nearest closest city and I visited the Valley Mall for the very first time and it was new then and we also saw The World is Not Enough and I asked my mother if it was real chest hair and two guys sitting next to my mother laughed and I asked my mother how does she know it's real and not fake like it was on Austin Powers and the guys just kept on laughing.

I was still obsessed with 101 Dalmatians and London

I remember when Internet Explorer was still a big thing and very popular web browser and my school used it and AOL was still in use too because I used to see urls be posted in commercials and ads and then keyword for AOL and we were still using dial up.

I was still adjusting to my country life and living in a 1500 sq house from a 2952 sq home. Lot of our stuff was packed in the chicken house or in the detached garage and my dad had his office at his parents and it took him a few years to get his business started so money was tight for a while because we lived on my mom's paychecks and everything went to credit cards for Christmas Shopping and Easter and birthdays.

I remember hearing John F Kennedy Jr dying from a plane crash.

That was the first year I heard about autism but I knew nothing about it then so I just assumed they were all like Simon Lynch and couldn't understand how can they still be autistic if some of them can talk. I thought communication was only talking.

I started school that year, so I was very little. I was obsessed with 101 Dalmatians, and I really liked Pokemon too. I remember that my grandmother would drive me to school every day because the bus scared me and I would get picked on by the older kids. She let me play with the radio, because I loved music even back then. I usually picked top 40 or classic rock. My sister used to do my hair every day before school and would always take me shopping whenever she went. That was the year I first started learning piano too. I really liked drawing and animals (which hasn't changed).

In 1999, I had cats on two opposite ends of the age spectrum-20 year-old Samantha and one year old triplet boys, Peter, Paul and Prince. Samantha and Prince were both Lynx point Siamese cats.

[quote="equestriatola"
2) Robin Ventura hitting a grand slam in game 5 to conclude a 15-inning marathon, but he only was credited with a single (and one RBI as a result) because Todd Pratt got to Ventura before he could get to second, and a celebration ensued. Good times. [/quote]

The Grand Slam Single
I still miss Shea Stadium

My birthday landed on 9/9/99.

Also, I watched that Togepi episode of Pokemon sometime in the sunmer, and have remained with it ever since. I stopped watching the anime a long time ago, but have been following the games as best as I could.