You might be our age if…

As members of the, er, Millennium generation? Gen Y? I’m not sure what Liz and I are, but surely we are members of some generation. And if you’re in your late 20s and lived in suburban America during your childhood, you know that ours was a very special time, a transitional time. Here are some random memories that you might relate to.

You might be the same age as Liz and Laura if…

-You owned at least one pair of JNCO jeans.

-You used to get a million ‘Free Month of AOL’ CDs in the mail…but you hung on to the first few because CDs were still really cool looking.

-Speaking of AOL, your first experience with the internet was with AOL connected to a slow dial-up modem. It took 20 minutes to check your email and days to download video clips, but dammit, you appreciated those files once you had them.

-You remember when 1-800 numbers were like a company’s website (the closest thing they had, anyway).

-You were around when 90210 and Melrose Place were on the air…both times around.

-You know how to do the Macarena, the Electric Slide, and perhaps the Boot Scootin’ Boogie. You also still remember how to “skank.”

-When you were a kid, long distance calls were expensive enough to get you grounded if you made one without permission.

-You tried to learn how to swing dance in high school and/or late middle school.

-You used to think that burning a music CD was just a faraway dream, like ordering a pizza online (remember when Sandra Bullock did it in The Net? That was essentially sci-fi at the time).

-Jurassic Park’s CGI effects totally blew your mind.

-You went to a spin art booth at the mall and made a “cool” piece of art either on a piece of paper (if you were cheap) or on a t-shirt with your name in the middle. And if you did get that t-shirt, boy, you wore it with pride.

-You knew how to do The Urkel, The Bartman, and any number of other funny dances based on TV characters (back when TV shows had no shame about breaking into a musical number, and when everything had to have a corresponding “Do the _____” dance).

-The only designer label jeans you can remember hearing about in your childhood were Guess jeans, and your parents thought they were a waste of money and that good, sensible people didn’t wear labels.

-You rushed home from school to watch Square One TV, 3-2-1 Contact, and Carmen Sandiego.

-You owned a pager.

-You watched “Captain EO” at Disneyland or Disney World, and on a related note, didn’t think that Michael Jackson was odd at all.

-You dressed up as Madonna or Cyndi Lauper for Halloween at least once.

-Your parents’ first couple of cars didn’t have air conditioning, and when they did get a car with AC, they rarely ran it on full blast, treating it like a thermostat.

-You remember when The Simpsons first aired, and the backlash from angry parents. In fact, your parents probably wouldn’t let you watch it at first.

-You owned multiple slap bracelets, at least one Swatch, and scrunchies in every color.

-Leggings, leg warmers, bodysuits, jellies, skorts, stirrup pants, Hypercolor, oversized t-shirts with those little ring things…I could go on. But you know you wore these things.

-You owned Vanilla Ice’s “To the Extreme” and wore out the cassette liner’s spines memorizing the lyrics.

-You crimped your hair.

-You had an extensive collection of troll dolls.

-You waited until the end of that one Blossom episode to watch the premier of Joey Lawrence’s music video.

-Instead of YouTube, you depended on America’s Funniest Home Videos for your videos of cats falling off things.