90s

“Old-school selfie: me holding up a point & shoot film camera sometime between 2003 and 2005.”

That was the caption I put on this photo when I uploaded it several months ago. I was going to lean in and tell you how I could tell it happened to be in that date range. But now looking at it, I can see this is positively prior to November 2003. I know that because that is when we bought the Emperor, a 2003 NB in Garnet Red, and this car is blue, and those seats are cloth NA seats. I owned two blue Miatas, a 1990 and a 1995, and because of the limited amount of blue you can see in the photo, there is no way to tell which car it is. It has to be prior to 2000 because I put leather seats in the 1995 that year.

Another clue was on the hat: the word “Word” is clear there, but what follows it? My first thought was WordPress, but that didn’t come into being until 2003. The only other thing I can think of is WordPerfect. That has been around since the late 70s, and according to Wikipedia, “the height of its popularity was in the 1980s and early 1990s.” I started work in Aiken in 1989, and the first computers came in the early 90s, so I think the best I can narrow it down to just somewhere between 1993-1999.