Carolyn Lorraine Dalla-Vicenza: September 9, 1974 – November 17, 1999

So if you read this post on September 9, 2024, my sweet daughter Carolyn would have been 50 years old. It’s now reached the time where Carolyn has been gone as many years as she was alive. She passed away on November 17, 1999 at the age of 25.

Since, I’ve lived my life “Pre-Carolyn” and “Post Carolyn”.

For instance, she never witnessed 911… that happened almost two years after she passed away.

She never saw the new millennium. That happened a month and a bit after she passed.

The internet was fledgling then. I had an email (hotmail) address that I seldom used because I didn’t own a computer that was online. I knew very few people with email addresses. I got mine for work. Not many people had them back then.

Back then there was still long distance phone calls. When Carolyn called home from one of her trips abroad and reversed the charges, it was a lot of money. Now we have Whatsapp and many other ways to communicate globally basically for free.

Back then bars and restaurants were smokey places. It seemed then that more people smoked than didn’t – quite the reverse of now.

To see a new movie, you had to go to a theatre. You could see very old reruns of movies on commercial television but had to wait through all the commercials. VHS Tapes were the way to record TV shows.

TV’s were giant tubes that heated up and broke down regularly. There was no ‘HD’ when it came to TV. Watching hockey games, you could barely see the puck half the time due to the primitive by comparison to now analogue screen reception.

Napster had just started in 1999 but most people didn’t have access to it. Only the college ‘Geeks’ had computer access.

Speaking of which, the term ‘Geek’ was an insult back then. Now, it’s looked on as a badge of honour.

Back then you still rented movies from a video store…usually Blockbuster. There was no Netflix, Amazon, Disney Channel etc etc etc. In fact, most TV’s ‘might have’ had CNN as a cable channel and ‘maybe’ Turner Classic Movies for oldies if they had a deluxe cable package.

Restaurants were only for ‘special nights’ and ‘date nights’. Now they are a way of life.

If you were able to go on a vacation, you literally ‘took a break’ from the world. If you went away for two weeks, you would have to catch up on the local gossip when you returned. You could actually get away from the ‘old rat race’. Now it follows you literally everywhere.

Terrorist attacks were much much less of a threat and usually in the form of plane hijackings to Cuba or something. The thought of people hijacking a plane to kill innocent passengers while taking their own life Kamikaze style was something you would have never dreamed of. Now, along with mass shootings and the like, it seems to be a very everyday occurrence.

You would never get daily ‘tweets’ from the leaders of our countries. We actually waited for them to address the nation on TV.

In 1999 you remembered phone numbers.

Texting didn’t exist in any real form as it was a very inefficient and complicated thing to achieve on your Nokia flip phone (if you had the latest cell phone technology – and most people didn’t)

You couldn’t imagine having to take off your shoes to fly.

Online dating!?

Limitless numbers of pictures are now the norm. Back then you still used film because digital cameras were expensive and cell phone cameras were garbage.

Electric cars? What?!?!