Stuff that was cool: Umbros

(This post is a nod to one of my favorite blogs, Stuff That Was Cool, which allows me to reminisce about the glorious decade that was the 1990s, multiple times every week.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I hear.)

Once upon a time, I was an insanely dorky and awkward middle schooler.  I had horrible bangs I was trying to grow out, never left home without a scrunchie in my bag and wore t-shirts just about everyday, tucked in.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I adored spring, summer and fall weather, though not for the sunshine, or flowers.  It was because it meant it was time to crack out my Umbros!

Though the company manufactured all sorts of soccer clothing and gear, for some reason it was Umbro’s shorts that really took off.  You could find them everywhere:  soccer stores, athletic stores, even department stores at the mall!  There were the shorts with the classic shiny checkerboard design, and the ones that looked like windpants material with a different color piping at the bottom.  Many had bright color combinations that would hurt your eyes.  All had the unmistakable diamond-within-a-diamond logo on the bottom of the shorts’ left leg.

Early on, most people I knew who wore Umbros were soccer players, at least recreationally.  But I hadn’t played the sport since 4th or 5th grade.  I actually hated soccer, but boy did I love Umbros shorts!  Stylish?  No.  But comfortable?  Absolutely.

As you may have guessed by my scrunchie ownership, I was not one for style.  Apparently this is a trait I shared with Jessica Biel.  When quoted in Harper’s Bazaar, Biel said:

“I literally wore Umbro shorts, No Fear T-shirts, and sneakers until I was, like, 15. I didn’t care, and my mom didn’t care. I didn’t have fashion icons.”

Neither did I.  I probably wore them til age 15 as well.  I remember vividly when I made varsity volleyball in 9th grade, I got teased by older (and much taller) teammates and earned the nickname “Umbro girl.”  Thankfully by that point in time I had developed a keen enough fashion sense to realize I shouldn’t wear the shorts for all occasions, though they were certainly an option for warm, lazy days and working out.  But in four years of varsity volleyball and nickname-dom, I never came around to the spandex-y leave-nothing-to-the-imagination shorts everyone else preferred.  I may have been a nerd and the laughingstock of the team, but hey, at least I was comfortable.  And an added bonus:  I could easily gain 1o or 15 pounds and no one would notice.  I could just loosen the drawstring waistband and enjoy the bagginess in the thighs that my Umbros offered.  Take that biker shorts!

Sexy, sexy, sexy shorts!  Boo-yah!

Magic Eye Syndrome

So I was reading a friend’s blog yesterday, and she had a nice, funny post about Photoshop Disasters, a pretty self-explanatory blog on — you guessed it — Photoshop disasters. Art directors, graphic designers, and Photoshop enthusiasts alike swear by this site. I’ll be the first to admit it though, sometimes I see the errors, and other times, I can stare at an image for ten minutes and not be able to identify what’s wrong with it.

All this time I’ve chalked up my visual ineptitude to being unobservant, blind, or some other unquantifiable variety of incompetent. But I’ve finally realized my dilemma. It’s because I have Magic Eye Syndrome.

Magic Eye Syndrome of course, is no real ailment. And if it is, I feel like it only affects me.

Ever since 3rd grade or whenever those Magic Eye books hit bookstores, I’ve always felt like a loser. Everyone raved about those optical illusions, and how when they stared at them they could always see the unmistakable shape of ______ just leaping out of the page.

I never could see these things! Every time I’ve started to see one, I got so excited that I lost it somewhere on the way. Why must this always happen to me?!! (See the answer to the one above at the end of the post.)

I can’t tell you how many times over the years that I’ve faked that I’ve solved a Magic Eye. No one wants to admit to being the only person in an elementary school class that they can’t see it! I’m still a little embarrassed about it. I was just like Rachel on Friends when she had an ultrasound and pretended she could see her baby on the screen. Ross pointed it out to her and she said she saw it, cried, and then admitted to not seeing it. He re-pointed it out, and the process repeated over and over. Wow, that hit too close to home. Oh my God, I’m going to be that same awful mother someday!

Anyway, to this day I’ll never understand why so many people raved about Magic Eye over the years. Do that many people really see the “subliminal” images? Or is the world full of fakers like me afraid to own up to their inability to solve them? And why on earth did these things cause such a fuss in the 90s?

I will now return back to looking at Photoshop Disasters, where I’ll likely not see what everyone is laughing at. But hey, then again maybe it’ll be in the 30% of the time I get it and laugh with everyone else — not lying! I much prefer my odds in Photoshop Disasters (a 30% chance is way much more encouraging than 0% after all).