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You could say I was a nineties kid. After all, that is the decade of my adolescence and young adulthood. In reality, however, I never was the typical nineties kid. I didn't know what grunge music until years after it had become a thing of the past. In fact, I was largely unaware of pop culture as a teenager. My parents were both fine artists, and they wanted me to follow in their footsteps. So, while my friends were going to concerts, shopping, and spending their summers in Miami Beach, I was following my family around Europe to various gallery openings. When they were reading teen magazines, I was taking painting lessons and helping my further sand and finish the furniture he sold in our family's showroom. All of this changed, albeit temporarily when I went to stay with an older cousin in London.

I had become interested in fashion and journalism, and my cousin agreed to let me live with her so that I could intern at a small fashion magazine just outside of London.

I arrived from London from Paris ready to begin working. My cousin had other ideas. "You work and study all of the time," she told me. "It's time you learned to have fun." So, that's what we did. I never told my parents, but I ditched the internship. Instead, we went to night clubs, drank, danced, and ate disgustingly rich fried foods and curries in the middle of the night. I nursed a lot of hangovers during that time, and I went on my first date. About a week before I was due to fly back home to France, I heard my cousin on the phone with my mother. It was my cousin concocting some story about how the fashion magazine absolutely loved me and needed for me to stay on for two more weeks. It turned out that my cousin had landed two tickets to see the Spice Girls performing in Barcelona. So, that was my last summer hurrah, partying in Barcelona, and seeing the Spice Girls in concert. To this day, when a Spice Girls' song comes on the radio, I can't resist turning up the volume. My internet handle Spice_Loni is a tribute to that summer when I finally learned to come out of my shell.