Double Sweet Sixteen

Today is my birthday. I am 32. A double sweet sixteen, if you will.

I’m actually spending my birthday at the same location as my sixteenth, at Sandcastle. Only, in 1999, I was there as an employee – making cotton candy, dodging the bees that circled the sno-cone syrup, and trying not to burn my hand on the pretzel oven again. Oh, those hazy, sticky, green polo-shirted days of summers past …

In honor of the day, here are some of the items that apparently rocked our collective worlds that year. Walk with me, down memory lane.

Books

• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
• A Walk to Remember, Nicholas Sparks
• Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Gregory McGuire
• Girl With a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
• Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson
• The Bad Beginning, Lemony Snickett
• Stardust, Neil Gaiman
• Timeline, Michael Crichton
• Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri

Movies

• Fight Club
• The Matrix
• American Beauty
• Big Daddy
• American Pie
• Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace 
• 10 Things I Hate About You
• The Sixth Sense
• Drive Me Crazy
• The Green Mile 

Music

• Millennium, Backstreet Boys
• …Baby One More Time, Britney Spears
• Breathe, Faith Hill
• Nastradamus, Nas
• Ricky Martin, Ricky Martin
• Double Live, Garth Brooks
• Human Clay, Creed
• Fly, Dixie Chicks
• Significant Other, Limp Bizkit
• Fanmail, TLC

– Jess, who is reading under an umbrella today