Choose Your Own Adventure
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WARNING! Do not read this story straight through from beginning to end. Its pages are filled with obsolete objects from your millennial childhood, and the choices you make along the way will determine one of eight possible endings.
Good luck!
PAGE 1
You were born in the early 1980s, which, let’s face it, was last century and then some. Between the brass pull-knobs of the wooden card catalog drawers and the steady hum of the microfiche reader, the public library was foundational for a childhood built on a series of now-obsolete objects (both analog and digital). So where to start?
To Drop Everything and Read (D.E.A.R.), turn to page 9.
To embrace pre-internet technology, turn to page 5.
PAGE 2
AOL’s screeching dial-up soundtrack marked the beginning of something beautiful, but you didn’t need the internet to have a good time at the communal computer station in the family room…because Minesweeper. Hypnotically addictive and infuriatingly dependent on chance, the hours you logged clicking squares and flagging bombs almost surpassed the time spent honing your Tetris skills on your Nintendo Entertainment System. Almost.
To listen to Коробейники, turn to page 8.
PAGE 3
You saw Clueless opening weekend and planned your outfit for weeks; not unrelated was a stretch where you considered Spice World to be your favorite piece of cinema. Other major in-person movie events of your young lifetime included Jurassic Park and The Net, starring Sandra Bullock, which you saw no less than three times in the theater.
To rearrange your Netflix queue, turn to page 16.
For the actual (inter)net, turn to page 2.
PAGE 4
Wait, what could you possibly have thought “Norm-curious” meant?
To get your life back on track, turn to page 13.
PAGE 5
The hot, melting plastic chemical smell of the library’s communal Xerox machine was as visceral a pheromone as anything else you can think of, and you spent hours dropping quarters in the slot, walking home with stacks of paper still warm to the touch. You can’t really recall why you had such urgent Xerox needs, but you suspect you invented at least some of them (the rest, of course, were encyclopedia-related).
Utilizing the Dynix digital card catalog was another thrilling tech experience—there were just a handful of stations and you were much more adept at using the actual card catalogs—but to sit in front of that small, square black screen, with its green block letters and steadily blinking cursor…swoon. Your screen time was so low back then, but your day would come.
Pheromones? For Designer Imposters, turn to page 7.
To log on, turn to page 17.
PAGE 6
Before Caller ID there was *69, and also *67 for when you didn’t want to get *69ed. 844-any-four-numbers would connect you with a recording that told you the time, which (along with literally everything else in existence) we are now so constantly aware of that we’ve invented angel numbers like 11:11 and 2:22 just to give ourselves hope when we glance at our phones for the thousandth time in a day. The End.
PAGE 7
The CVS makeup aisle was where hopes, dreams, and nascent shoplifters saw their natural beginnings. You drenched yourself in Designer Imposters’ CK1 and Sunflowers, and the amount of CoverGirl blush you went through in your teen years qualified it as a vice. When you discovered the hair dye (one aisle over), an entirely new world opened up, and you’re still reeling from the injustice of having been grounded for weeks simply because you (temporarily) stained the bathtub while dyeing your hair a shockingly bright Ariel-red.
To remain grounded forever, turn to page 14.
PAGE 8
The Tetris theme song, to this day, activates the Nintendo sleeper agent deep within you. When your husband downloads the full suite of classic NES games on his Switch, you limit yourself to a single round each night after dinner as to maintain gainful employment and a regular shower schedule. The End.
PAGE 9
You started reading at age three and never stopped; the year you received an American Girl doll for Christmas you whispered “Wow, fully poseable arms and legs” while lifting her out of the box (because you’d memorized every line of copy in the catalog). The public library, then, is mecca.
You spend at least part of each visit poring over the well-worn paperbacks in the dedicated YA carousel. For every coming-of-age masterpiece (see: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; I Capture the Castle), there are a dozen throwaways with terrifically inappropriate renderings of women and teenage girls. As it is your own greatest wish to grow up to be one or the other, close attention is paid.
You remember that the Mom in the Sweet Valley High series was the same “perfect size 6” as her daughters, and from some long-forgotten high school thriller, there was an extremely…thorough description of a character’s breasts—perpetually in motion and straining the fabric of a bright yellow t-shirt—that’s been embedded in your neural pathways for 35 years and counting.
To get a little bi-curious, turn to page 15.
If you identify as a Samantha, turn to page 18.
PAGE 10
The payphone at your local 7-11 functioned as the center of high school society; occasionally, on Friday nights, you’d give it a call just to see who was around. Your first cell phone was the size of a Nerf football, and taking a photograph with it never would have occurred to you in this lifetime. You’ve since held on to every pre-cloud phone you ever owned with the assumption that you’ll one day buy the relevant chargers off eBay to recover the photos and texts held within, but you and I both know that’s never going to happen. The End.
PAGE 11
You inherited an unwieldy 13” box television with an honest-to-god antenna from your older brother, and being able to watch TV alone in your room changed your life. UPN20 had the strongest signal, and you'd sneakily stay up 'til 2am for reruns of A Different World and Living Single. On Saturday nights you killed time with MadTV before 11:30, when NBC4 almost-sort-of started coming in sans static—just in time for Weekend Update. You had a secret and somewhat intense crush on Norm McDonald, thereby confirming your Hopeless Heterosexuality™.
To get a little Norm-curious, turn to page 4.
For more secret SNL stuff, turn to page 13.
PAGE 12
I’m so sorry—I didn’t want to be the one to tell you. You died of dysentery while drowning while fording a river, and also you were struck by lightning and your wagon overturned. The End.
PAGE 13
You kept Adam Sandler’s They’re All Gonna Laugh at You! album hidden in your room because of the “Parental Advisory” sticker, and laughed until you cried while listening to it quietly on your boombox. For the rest of your life, select lines from “Lunchlady Land” will emerge unbidden from the depths of your mind, and you will often wonder if something of utility should perhaps be stored there instead. After an attempt at a re-listen in 2022-ish, you decide that the album, as whole, is best left as a beautiful memory. The End.
PAGE 14
You lost your coat in 9th grade (one month penalty). You lost your house key for the millionth time (two weeks without TV). You had a bunch of people over while your parents were out of town (yeah, okay, you probably deserved that one). You remember being grounded for the whole of one particular December, which you spent collaging the walls of your room and listening to the Baz Luhrmann Romeo + Juliet soundtrack under the soft glow of Christmas lights. Honestly, it was kind of magical. The End.
PAGE 15
There was the Clairol ad of Yasmeen Ghauri that you ripped out of Seventeen and thumbtacked to your bedroom wall, followed later by Drew Barrymore’s and Alicia Silverstone’s respective Rolling Stone covers. Beautiful girls aside, it was a privilege to have caught the tail-end of Sassy (formative!), and Jane was your late-teens and early-20s bible. Entertainment Weekly gave credence to your pop-culture obsessions, and early Nylon, omg.
To keep on with the printed word, turn to page 19.
As if! To talk about Clueless instead, turn to page 3.
PAGE 16
You were on the two-DVDs-at-a-time Netflix plan (because you worked retail in your 20s, and the three-DVD-premium plan would have financially broken you). In 2007 you decided it was a travesty that you’d never watched The West Wing. It took months to get through, and while completing it still feels like one of your greatest accomplishments, it was a Sisyphean 44 discs and you will never get that time back. The End.
PAGE 17
Two days a week your elementary school class would shuffle over to the Computer Room to play Fraction Munchers and Oregon Trail; at home you’d scour the globe via PC in Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (which would later translate beautifully into a PBS game show; The Chief, played by Lynne Thigpen, spoke in the most authoritative voice you'd ever had the pleasure of hearing). Oh, and playing Drug Wars on your TI-83 graphing calculator was so compelling that you ended up having to take Algebra twice.
To change the channel, turn to page 11.
To follow the Oregon Trail, turn to page 12.
PAGE 18
Each of the first-gen American Girl Dolls held her own appeal: Kirsten had braids and a candle crown, Samantha had long tumbling hair and a New York mansion, and Molly…had a Victory Garden? Kind of sad :( Soon you’d make moves over to The Babysitter’s Club, which held a slightly wider range of individual narratives. Your favorite was Claudia Kishi because she was an artist who wore incredible outfits and had her own phone line. Also her best friend had diabetes. So chic.
For pre-area-code landlines, call page 6.
For a good time, call page 10.
PAGE 19
Sitting down with The Washington Post Sunday comics was an event, and you kept an eye on the movie listings like you would otherwise check your stocks. The horoscopes held answers you didn’t even know you were desperately seeking, and eventually you staked claim to the weekend crossword puzzle in the Magazine.
By the time it ceases printing in 2008, you’ll have clipped more than a few “Poet’s Choice” selections from the Book World insert (including Czeslaw Milosz’s “A Confession,” which left you a little breathless). Your greatest find, though, is this snippet from Charles Wright’s “15”:
“You still love the ones you loved
back when you loved them—books,
Records, and people.
Nothing much changes in the glittering rooms of the heart,
Only the dark spaces half-reclaimed.
And then not much,
An image, a line. Sometimes a song.”
So…yeah. You’re kind of into nostalgia. The End.
“Choose Your Own Adventure” emailed out 9.10.2025. Subscribe here.