Why 90s Kids Are The Best Kids
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Why 90s Kids Are The Best Kids

And why we're bitter kids too.

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Why 90s Kids Are The Best Kids

If you're like me, you've joined in on the never ending 90s nostalgia that seems to be everywhere on the Internet. Maybe you follow the Facebook Page 90's Babies only. Maybe you've seen this video, where a man makes 90s cartoons out of pancake batter, and you immediately missed everything you knew. Maybe you were perusing YouTube and you say the video for Fall Out Boy's "Irresistible", and the N*Sync figures and theme threw you for a loop and had you looking up the music video for "Dirty Pop". Well. let me tell you something, there were so many amazing things about our childhood, that there's a reason we're still obsessed. Unfortunately, all these reasons aren't good.

We had the best music.

This is so crucial. You know you were addicted to some of these things as a kid, even before you really knew what they were singing about. Destiny's Child, Shaggy (" It Wasn't Me" was released in 2000, so basically your 90s childhood), Britney Spears, TLC and so much more. Remember when Will Smith was a rapper? R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion"? Released in 1991. "Wannabe"? As in Spice Girl's "If you wanna be my lover?" 1994. Crazy, isn't it? But if you play these songs now, most of our generation can belt them out word for word.

We had the best toys.

Remember before the Internet? I'm sure you do. There were so many things we did before the Internet. We had toys, real toys, that we played with that required us to think, or to move, or to be quick. Remeber Elefun?

You loaded the butterflies up into the little jerk's trunk, and then you fought tooth and nail with whoever was playing with you, because if you didn't get all the butterflies, your life would end. Oh, was that just me? There are other toys that incited our never ending madness. There was also the Tamagotchi. God forbid you didn't feed that thing. If it wasn't right in your hand, you panicked. Where is it!? Where could it be!? How about my least favorite game, Perfection? All of my friends had these:

The devil himself created this game, but looking back on it, it was so genius. A cognitive game that helped you get quicker and quicker? Do smart. And so infuriating when the timer went off and all the pieces exploded out.

We had great TV Shows.

We had the best books.

Sometimes people forget this, because Harry Potter is such a powerfully amazing series, and has taken over the world. But the first Harry Potter book was published in America in 1999. What this means is we were the first kids to get a hold of Harry Potter books. We ended that decade with the first book in our hands, and for most of us, the love of Harry Potter helped to shape the rest of our childhoods. J.K. Rowling taught us lessons about hope, love and disappointment, because we would spend years waiting for Hogwarts letters that were never going to arrive.

We has the best movies.

"Forrest Gump", "Jurassic Park", "Clueless", "Good Will Hunting" (RIP Robin), "Braveheart", "Saving Private Ryan" and "American History X" all came out in the 90s. These movies, and so many more, were some of the greatest films to cut our movie-goer teeth on. Back before every single movie was a remake or based on books, video games, or mobile apps (yeah, angry birds, really?), there was the 90s, when people still had their own ideas.

We had the best (worst) sense of style.

There was something about the 90s. I don't know what to tell you. We all wanted to be clueless.

We thought overalls were the way to go.

We let Aaron Carter dress in duct tape. Silver? I don't know what this is. Not only did we allow it, we loved it. We looked at these people and wanted to be them. We hung these photos on our walls. We were the 90s. Thank God my mom was in charge of buying clothes and would have never allowed me anything like these outfits.

We had the healthiest childhoods.

Being the last generation to mostly grow up without never ending video games is so important. We had days and days outdoors. We played hide and go seek, freeze tag and threw balls that we could never find. We wandered our neighborhoods from dawn till dusk, coming home only when the street lamps turned on and our parents called for us. (If they used your middle name, you knew it was all over, you were grounded.) We played four square. We argued over the rules. Hopscotch was a thing. For a while we carried this into our teenage/adult lives. We still talk about it, "I don't understand why kids don't go outside more," and "when I was younger, if I tried to play games too much my parents took them away." We are slowly turning into our parents, and it's not a bad thing in some ways.

We got to see technology really start to develop.

If you don't remember being excited about AOL discs, you either didn't have a computer or you're not the 90s kid I'm talking to. Every time I got a new America Online Disc, the world opened up. I couldn't pay for it, but all my friends used AOL Instant Messenger, and I wanted to as well. I wanted to get online and change the color of my text and create away messages so they knew how clever I was. The only thing that could really ruin this time was my mom calling down the stairs, "Get off the computer, I'm waiting for an important phone call!?" That was literally the worst. When your parents wouldn't or couldn't get a second phone line, the house became a battlefield for internet time. A battle that us 90s kids lost every time.

We saw cell phones really start to become what they are today. In the 80s, they were essentially huge house phones that you needed a briefcase just to carry. In the 90s, they came something manageable. Nokia really cornered the market for a while there, creating this little beauty:

This phone, the Nokia 6110 came out in 1997, and inspired some of the Tracfone's we really remember growing up. Most importantly though, it had the best game ever on it: Snake.

Unfortunately, our generation is also characterized by something else: A loss of hope.

We remember the American Dream.

We remember being told as we were growing up that the only way to succeed in life was to work hard. That's it. Work hard, push yourself, and you'll get what's coming to you. And in the early 90s, this was solid advice. We knew that as we were growing up, we just needed to try. We had to work hard. We had to push ourselves. As long as we did that, things would turn out all right in the end. But now we're faced with the idea that that isn't true.

We knew that hard work would get us good jobs. But then, as we got older, we saw how getting good jobs wasn't going to be that easy. Our middle and high school years were characterized by never ending unemployment (which is down, but still frightening.) We knew we wanted to go to college, but the cost of college has gone up so much, that some of us can't afford it. We all want the basic things: food, shelter, water, transportation and medical coverage, but the cost of all these things have gone up so much that we have to worry. People in Flint don't have water. People in poverty don't have health insurance. Houses are now affordable, as minimum wage doesn't rise with the cost of living. We're scared.

We're 90s kids, and we have a sense of anxiety that comes from the changing of the world around us. The reason we're so intent on remembering the 90s fondly, is because the 2010s are scary. The top music in this decade is a mash up of things we don't recognize. Adults think we're entitled. They think we demand everything, and we want everything, but our generation, the Lost Generation, just wants what we were promised. We want the American Dream.

We want to know that hard work will get us where we want to be. We want to have some of the simpler days we had before. We want to sit and enjoy our lives. We just want our kids to know what we had, from our terrible sense of fashion to the Olsen Twins when they were a household name. We miss it.

This isn't a criticism. This is me saying that it's okay. It's okay to miss the 90s. Never let go.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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