Aunt Jennifer would like to take this time to wish all those college-bound kiddos a great year at their luxury spas.
Or freshman dorms, as they call them.
These Pinterest-y palaces with handcrafted headboards, shimmery chandeliers and all things matchy and monogrammed are a fabulous far cry from the dismal dormitories that awaited us back in the early 1990s -- long ago in the uncivilized time known as B.H.G.T.V -- that's Before HGTV.
Back then, we rolled up in our parents' minivan (my one-kid nuclear family didn't own one so we rented one) with a few necessities. And then we proceeded to haul them up multiple flights of stairs -- because the three antique elevators were always occupied or broken -- in the hot-as-Hades, non-air-conditioned high-rise.
We slept on scratchy sheets (before we knew that cotton had a type and before we knew the significance of "thread count") from a discount store on a prison-quality mattress. Maybe we'd eventually get a piece of foam to make it less dreadful, but never were the words "memory," "bamboo," "quilted" or "deluxe" used to describe it.
As for bedding, my mom spent the summer making the colorful custom quilt I used (and kicked off when it got to be 120 degrees in our room in winter; we had no AC, but the heat worked ... too well). Other dorm mates had blankets from stores like the once-thriving Kmart (RIP, my Blue Light Special friend).
Friend Rebecca remembers the extent of her dorm room decor, "My roommate and I had matching bedspreads from the J.C. Penney catalog." Merchandise catalogs, my young friends, is how we used to shop before we had two-day free shipping. We would eventually see said stuff in two weeks to two months.
We would chip in with our roommates (typically strangers -- and with horrible taste in wall art -- with whom we were matched at random) to buy a cheap carpet that never quite fit the awkward room layout. But even when it pilled, it at least took some attention away from our roommates' tacky man-in-tighty-whities poster. Ew.
Our tiny cinder-block cell had little space for anything else, except dressers and a shared mini fridge (purchased, not provided) that doubled as the TV stand for our tiny set with rabbit ears. We'd each have a desk, which had no space for writing because it held our bulky Brother word processor or the clunkiest computer in the entire world, complete with dual floppy disk drives and a loud dial-up modem (not that we knew what to do with it, as the internet wasn't a thing just yet).
When we needed additional storage and shelving, we'd have to get creative by stacking cheap plastic crates. And I don't mean we had Crate and Barrel.
We weren't cooking up gourmet meals in our dorms. If dinner wasn't a dining hall dish or hot pot of ramen noodles, it was delivery gluten-full pizza. Sure we had a communal, questionably clean kitchen. But we didn't have the Food Network or cooking magazines or BuzzFeed and its "23 Dorm Room Meals You Can Make In A Microwave" list with options like Pizza Mug Cake and 10-Minute Butternut Squash Risotto Cup.
We'd lug a month's worth of dirty clothes, towels and sheets, detergent and fabric softener down to the basement, jingling all the way with pockets full of quarters ... only to find out all the few coin-operated machines that were working were taken, and have to repeat the process some other time. And then we'd have to baby-sit our clothes for hours to make sure they didn't get prematurely yanked out of a machine by an over-eager student or disappear entirely in a pledge prank or petty crime.
We didn't have the cleaning and laundry services some of you have available. Class of 2021 (or 2022 or 2026 -- who could blame you for not wanting to leave?), y'all most certainly have it "maid."
Hit the books and the email:
Spin Cycle is a smirk at pop culture. You can hear Jennifer on Little Rock's KURB-FM, B98.5 (B98.com), from 5:30 to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday.
Style on 08/20/2017