I hope you enjoyed those themed segments of memories, but a brief intermission for the normal timeline. I've already discussed most of the important tales from 96 and 97. Now it's time to enter the last two years of the 90s. I didn't know it then, but the 90s giving way to a new millennium was the end of a decade that meant the world to me.
1998 made a big splash with the arrival of Pokemon to the US shores. It had already been released in Japan since 1996, but once the craze was introduced here, we couldn't get enough. The games, cards, and toys flew off the shelves. Burger King introduced the creatures as a toy in kids meals and they sold out in hours all across the US. Kids couldn't get enough of a digital world where you could go adventure, capture strange, but charming creatures, and battle with them. Pokemon cards were a hot commodity which kids collected as many as they could to try and get them all. The search for the ever elusive holographic Charizard caused gullible parents to spend a lot of money on packs of cards hoping their kid would pull it. Unlike the Beanie Baby craze, this one had some weight. Because today in 2021, Pokemon is still going strong and those in my generation who are now adults are getting hit with the nostalgia of their youth and buying up cards everywhere. That holographic Charizard in near perfect condition goes for $300,000 online! Imagine if your kid was lucky enough to find one of these and kept it in a card sleeve all these years. Their college tuition and a mortgage would be covered. Pokemon was more than a craze. It became a cultural phenomenon.
A big change entered my life late 1998. Elise's dad's job offered him a five year deployment in Germany. Just like that at 7 years old, my best female friend was moving halfway around the world. I was definitely a little sad at the time, but my young, stupid self couldn't fully comprehend the weight of what was happening. Someone who I knew pretty much my entire existence was leaving for a long time which would ultimately cause us to drift apart. When she left, we wrote back and forth via letter a handful of times that first year. Her family even sent us a large package with German goodies inside. But my family didn't have the technology we have today and combined with the lack of desire I had for writing letters, our contact simply faded. It's hard to fault a young child for that. Many are a product of their environment and can make new friends as easily as they lose old ones, but I never did forget the ones I had before. There are times I do wish younger me knew the true value of that friendship and fought to keep it close. But life continued on and I still had my main core of friends around me to keep me going.
Somewhere around this time, two new friends entered the scene. They are brothers by the names of Matthew and Curtis, but we called them Matt & Curt. Their mom Melissa (Missy) started meeting with us on Sundays and that's how we came to know them. It was really good to have more boys around who weren't my siblings. They fit right in with all of our shenanigans and at time brought some of their own.
Legos really took off for me during this year. I signed up for the Lego magazine and each time one came in the mail, I read it cover to cover many times over. So much so that the pages would become tattered and torn from excessive use. If I liked the magazine enough, I'd keep stapling it back together. My 1998 Christmas catalogue should be in the Smithsonian. It was also because of the magazines that I saw more and more sets I had to have. I remember one day in the middle of the summer, I burst into my mom's room while she was on the phone. I was upset because I didn't have any new Lego sets. The person on the other end of the line was my grandma. Mom told me to talk to her. She settled me down and told me to mention one I liked that was under $20. I told her I liked the Land Jet 7 from the Extreme Team collection. And that was that. No she didn't go out and buy me the set on the spot. And I eventually forgot about it.
Summer gave way to Autumn and Autumn fell to Winter. Christmas was looming around the corner and I couldn't be more excited that my favorite holiday was upon us. All December long I jammed to Christmas tunes on cassette tapes, watched Frosty the Snowman at least five times, ate delicious iced Santa cookies, and dreamed of a white Christmas.
Then Christmas Eve arrived. My parents had spent the day wrapping gifts, making food, and dealing with our extra bouts of energy. After dinner, we all bundled up and piled into the car. The trunk of the station wagon had gifts for my grandparents, uncle, aunt, and cousins. We cruised down the road to Grandma's house, gazing in awe at all the Christmas lights along the way. When we made that all too familiar left turn into their driveway, you couldn't really tell they celebrated Christmas unless you saw the wreath on the door. There were hardly any decorations on the outside to be seen. Yet, the inside was truly what mattered.
Walking through the front door into the breezeway, I was greeted by the musical Christmas lights, the smell of the cookies lying in wait, and the glow from the basement was a beckoning beacon of warmth. I rushed in and said hi to Grandma and Grandpa, surveyed all the goodies in the kitchen, then rushed down to the basement where the fully decorated tree stood, guarding all the colorfully wrapped gifts tucked underneath it. It wasn't long before everyone arrived and assembled in the basement. Grandpa had an stove-like fireplace and a black cauldron next to it where he stored all his carving wood scraps. It didn't take him long before he had a nice roaring fire. He'd give me and my cousin Dave the task of keeping it going by feeding it the wood blocks. Then came the fun part. Handing out the gifts. Being able to see the size of every one, the type of wrapping paper that adorned them, and simply being able to find mine was such a blast. I ran all over the basement, scooping up gifts from under the tree and delivering them to each person whose name was displayed upon them. After all the gifts were handed out, us kids were given the green light and we began ripping the colorful wrapping paper to shreds. I liked to start with the big ones first and finished with the little ones because to me bigger meant better. At one point I had a average sized package in my hands. Like the presents before it, its wrapping paper was rendered useless. My jaw dropped. I was not expecting this. There in my shaking hands was the Extreme Team Land Jet 7 Lego set I had asked for 6 months ago. I was in shock, but overjoyed. My grandparents, aunt, uncle, and parents all beamed knowing they had helped make this Christmas that much more special.
Normally we would wait until the next day to assemble and play with the Legos, but this one couldn't wait. Dave, who also received a Lego set, joined me at the little square table and we began the assembly process. Before long, we both had completed sets which we promptly set aside to go play in all the shredded wrapping paper all over the floor. The rest of the evening was spent enjoying lots of goodies and good company before our parents had to get us home and to bed at a decent hour.
Fast forward to 1999 which leapt upon us like a tiger in the grass. It was the last year of the millennia. There was much excitement and anticipation in the coming of the year 2000. But there was also a significant amount of unwarranted fear. Why? Technology was developing at incredible lengths. Home computers were becoming more popular and efficient. The internet was charging us full steam ahead into the future. So much so that everything was beginning to be run by it. The fear that arose was that the computers did not have a way to compensate for the calendar leaving the 1900s and entering the 2000s. There was a panic that everything would crash. As silly as this sounds, the fear of such a catastrophic event loomed over 1999.
Another major event that I was well aware of at eight years old was the ongoing impeachment of President Bill Clinton. I did not know what that meant, but I remember it being all over the news, the bumper stickers of people's cars, stickers on light poles in Walmart parking lots, basically everywhere. It was odd that this was happening to the only president I knew (George H.W. Bush was president only until I was 2 years old). For a young kid who was already fascinated by history, this event was strange and annoying as I didn't fully understand why it was happening and was sick of seeing it everywhere. Ultimately the Senate acquitted him and he finished his final term, but his reputation was forever tarnished.
One of my favorite Backstreet Boys songs of all time was released this year. Titled, "I Want It That Way" this song ruled the airwaves and continued to surge their popularity and that of the boyband generation. Years later, this song has still made for memorable mini jam sessions with my fellow 90s babies.
By the time the 90s were nearly over, two other things had become a large staple for me. Labor Day conferences and Camp Wabanna. These were two large annual events that a handful of east coast churches put together. The Labor Day conference meant we would go down to Virginia over Labor day weekend, stay with a family down there, and attend meetings with 100s of other people. Camp Wabanna was a large camp facility located on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland where all the same churches would gather in the spring and fall for a fun-filled retreat weekend. I'm going to go into detail on these two events later on, but I bring them up now because two major things happened in my life revolving around these two events.
With the Labor Day conference, our family met another family whom we became extremely close friends with. They are the Bishops. Their eldest son, Wesley, and I became fast friends and best buds. He became my closet friend in the DC area. His family consisted of parents Brian and Cindy, a sister Bonnie, and another brother Grayson. His youngest brother Joseph came a little later. Whenever we got together, we were two hooligans who drove everyone around us nuts. Whether we were pretending to be soldiers in a great battle, annoying our sisters, or coming up with new adventures, life was always good around him and his family.
Camp Wabanna led to very significant change in my life that impacted me for years. It occurred between 1998 and 1999, although I do not remember the exact year. It wasn't great and was life altering. But I need to save that story for the next chapter and am only mentioning it because it happened in this part of the timeline.
I'm sure there's some things that I want to share with all of you that may be buried in the back of my mind at the moment, so I apologize in advance if I flash back on them later. All that being said, we say goodbye to the 90s, the decade I came into existence, began to form my identity, and is still to me one of the best decades of my life. On to the new millennia!
