50 for 50: 1990

YEAR: 1990

AGE: Turned 20 on Nov. 6

LOCATION: Milwaukee/Marquette/East Hall; Chicago, Rascher Avenue; Milwaukee/Marquette, Renee Row

MARQUETTE MEN'S BASKETBALL RECORD:15-14

SONGS I LIKED: "Don't Go Away Mad" by Motley Crue; "The Other Side" by Aerosmith; "Poison" by Bell Biv Devoe; "No Myth" by Michael Penn

MOVIES I SAW: "Die Hard 2"; "Dick Tracy"

TV SHOWS I WATCHED: "The Simpsons"; "America's Funniest Home Videos"

CONCERT I ATTENDED: B-52s/Ziggy Marley

MUSIC VIDEOS I ENJOYED: "Cradle of Love" by Billy Idol; "Enjoy the Silence" by Depeche Mode

VIDEO GAMES I PLAYED: Klax, Blades of Steel

Thirty years ago, college was still a study-and-drinking mentality (whereas today, I think it's more study-and-hang-out -- I could be wrong, but it feels like kids don't drink as much as they once did). When you're 19 and don't have a fake ID, parties are all you got.

In 1990, the parties at Marquette were a blast. In my last year in the dorms, our floor's RA drank more than his residents. Wisconsin wasn't that far past increasing the legal drinking age to 21, so other than the occasional raid, police tended to look the other way on parties, and bars didn't try to hard to spot fake IDs. 

So that April, when several hundred students descended upon a park on the lakefront with kegs, it didn't seem that weird. It was crazy fun, but kind of par for the course in Wisconsin back then.

And that fall, when two fraternities threw a hundred-kegger in the lot between their two houses, it was an event, not a risk. There was beer left over the next day for a sequel party, where I ran into a girl I hung out with the night before and resumed smooching (that's all the kissing and telling I'm writing about in this series of posts ...).

And then there was a happy hour party on a Friday that started early enough that after it was over, I went home, took a nap, and woke up with a bit of a hangover ... at 10 p.m. on Friday. My friends and I went back out to another party.

Besides my love life being all over the place (again, no more details will be provided ...), 1990 was so much about hanging out with friends -- parties or no parties. I spent the summer at home, working six days a week and out and about when I wasn't. Needless to say, I was often tired, but school resumed that fall, and I eventually was hired by the Milwaukee Sentinel as an agate clerk in the sports department -- my first official job in the industry.

As I was looking through a photo album from pictures from this year, I saw so many from different friend groups: the guys on my floor, my freshman year friends, friends from the school newspaper, and my high school friends (I visited Champaign three times in 1990). What I couldn't find were that many of me. I had this cheap Kodak camera and took a bunch of pics of everyone to document, for myself, the happy times we were having.

Senior year of college might have been more fun, but 1990 was the wilder ride.

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