Child of the 90's

If I've said it once I've said it a million times the 90's were a great time to grow up in. The world didn't seem as broken as it is today, it wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. We had awful conflicts going on in The Gulf and The Balkans, the economy was just about as messed up as it is today and politicians still couldn't be trusted to deliver what they promised the masses. So what made it so good? And why recently has it dawned on me why we had it so good.

The dawning is the whole phenomenon that is the whole 6 7 craze that is currently sweeping the youth of the nation. I had no idea on what it meant until a friend who is of similar age to me said it's the equivalent to the Budweiser 'wassssuuppp' or the DX crotch chop and it suddenly made sense to me but it made me long for the days when telling your friends to suck it was a sign of respect and comradery.  I did take it one step to far and got a severe reprimand from a referee when I scored a goal in a football match against our big rivals Nortoft, at the time I thought it was funny and to be honest I still do, seeing as I knew most of the opposite team.

Maybe I'm looking through it with some rose tinted glasses on but the world just seemed so much better didn't it? For the majority of my childhood we only had four television channels to chose from, and the big argument was which Spice Girl was the hottest, well in my circle of friends at least, just for the record I always had a little thing for Posh Spice.  Movies were unique, with releases such as Jurassic Park,  Clerks, Schindler's List, Pulp Fiction, Unforgiven, Toy Story, all films that everytime I rewatch I think why can't modern films be as good or original?

Television had Seinfeld, Friends, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air ,Red Dwarf  and just seemed to excite me more. Music was more original with the Britpop explosion with Oasis, Blur, Space, The Boo Radleys, music that is still my go to for whatever mood I'm in. Taping the songs off the radio and getting annoyed at yourself if you didn't cut it off before the DJ started.

From a personal point of view, wrestling had The Attitude era, with people like Stone Cold, The Rock, Chris Jericho and De-Generation X pushing the envelope. It felt more real than ever before and the old trope of good guy bad guy with the atrocious gimmicks of the golden age of wrestling long forgotten, we instead had the quintessential anti hero (long before Taylor Swift coined the phrase for another one of her hits) in Stone Cold, mixed with wrestling porn stars in Val Venis to legitimate fighters such as Kurt Angle and Ken Shamrock. They tackled such topics as race and gang culture, penis amputation and the birth of a hand from an 80 year old women. Seriously just google Mae Young, Mark Henry and the birth. 

Football was better, maybe not as skilful as todays game but it was better to watch and more exciting, yes VAR has a lot to do with it, I love a bad refereeing decision, but we had players like Ginola, Klinnsman, Cantona, players who just had something extra about them that excited the crowd and got them going. 

We used to hang around  and argue things just for the sake of it, things like how many claps were in the Friends theme, now they are settled with a quick google search on our mobiles, which is something we didn't have. I didn't get my first mobile phone until I was 17 years old and only then it was because my parents were getting ready to send me off to university and wanted to make sure they had a way of keeping in contact with me. I remember hours spent on the house phone, after 6pm because that's when the cheaper rate kicked in, talking to girlfriends whilst trying hard not to be overheard by the rest of the family. Or if it was a very important call that needed privacy running to the phone box at the end of the road and getting the other person to phone me back.

We had pogs, we had Tamagochi's, we had Happy Meals that contained a good toy, We had the Mega Drive and SNES, We had the Macarena and Saturday night......the list goes on.

Would I go back to those days? Yes in a heartbeat.