Here is a list of all things wrong with the 1990s:

  • Glue sticks – I know we were all infatuated with the purple Elmer’s glue stick, thinking it was the best thing to hit us since jelly bracelets, but gee were we wrong. Those suckers don’t hold a thing. Sure they might have for the first year or so these Production Books were put into the archives, but 12 years later? Everything was falling out of these books.
  • Plastic screws – Have you ever had to deal with these? They are little plastic screws that you put into another tubular screw in order to hold something together. If you haven’t, then learn about them now before you have to face them because they are the WORST (If you don’t know what they are, which we did not). It took Mary Haynes and me so long to figure out how these things worked, let alone how to get them unscrewed. I almost broke one because I could not for the life of me figure out how to keep one end from moving while twisting the other. It was awful.
  • Random objects? – There is something about 1994 and gluing random objects into the books for decoration. We saw ribbons, bows, monopoly pieces, cloth dolls, some of the oddest things you could think of. I blame the Gold Side’s circus theme.
  • Plywood covers- You read right folks, plywood. For the covers. Yepp, Purple’s 1994 Production Book was made out of three plywood pieces hinged together to create a book. Believe it or not, that’s one of the most reasonable things these books have been made from before they were regulated.
  • Glitter – All I’m going to say is that Mary Haynes sat down one of the books and glitter shot out. We still don’t know from where.

So in conclusion, knowing that 1994 is one of the more docile years when it comes to the Production Books makes me cringe. There is a reason the College Night committee added a Legacy Product aspect to the Production book scoring in 2003, because these books were not made for preservation. At all.

 

On the plus side, we did get our IRB approval and knocked out one of our interviews! So not all was lost to the 90s woes.