Nostalgia Kills

Being an adult is strange. I still don’t even really consider myself one for the plain fact that I for one: still need to look up how to properly write a check, the only credit card I own is from Kohls and I didn’t even want it, the sly middle aged lady tricked me into thinking I was getting a rewards card, but hey, mind as well build my credit for the three times I go to that store every year. I also was looking online at apartments yesterday and I had to look up what “sublet” meant. I had to read like four different definitions until I was fully confident in its purpose in the world. I hate folding clothes, like I literally hate it. I always over-stuff the washer with blacks, whites, towels, shoes, pillows, rainbow socks, (My mother is probably cringing at this) but you get the idea. Being a 20 (almost 21 BETCHEZ) year old woman is weird and the older I get the more foggy the memories become and that is absolutely terrifying. Especially high school memories because I wasn’t aware of how far away that time actually is from me now. NOT COOL.

Losing all of my memories is one of the worst things that could ever happen to me. I have made SO many photo-albums, home videos, and diaries since I was like 6-years-old that it’s insane. I am just obsessive with making sure my 80-year-old self can spend a whole weekend looking through this huge pile of stuff just to know it happened and be able to re-live those moments, and to think that any of this stuff that I have worked so hard to capture gets destroyed or lost BREAKS MY TENDER HEART.

I barely ever think of the future, which I know can be a problem. I live almost entirely in the now, which is what you're supposed to do, but recently I’ve been thinking of the past. Maybe its because everything is changing so rapidly now, but I definitely know nostalgia has dug its claws into my shoulders because I’m realizing time is RIDICULOUSLY unfair. Being a kid was THE BEST. Even if during the time it seemed pretty normal and regular. But that’s what it is, WE DON’T APPRECIATE IT AT THAT AGE. I don’t know about you but I remember being told over and over as a kid: “this is the best time of your life, don’t wish to be a grown-up, you can run and play and have no responsibilities… so take advantage of that” and I was just like, Okay? Whatever can you stop interrupting me while I try to duck-tape this bed sheet to my bedpost without making the whole ceiling to my fort collapse? This is some serious shit right now I got a lamp and coloring books and my beanie baby friends underneath there.

And here is where I begin my list of nostalgia. I couldn't fit them all, the list would be never ending, but here i'll let the bits and pieces of what I miss about my childhood reveal themselves. 90’s kids, this is for you:

      1.     Forts

Ah, forts... those were the best. I swear to you my cousin Cassie and I were the CHAMPIONS of fort making. We made a fort in our grandparent's basement ON TOP of a Ping-Pong table and UNDERNEATH it. Yes, it was a TWO-STORY fort. BEAT THAT SHIT.

2.     FURBY’s

Those things are evil, but I remember the hype of those furry wide eyed creatures and I just HAD to have one. When I got it I had NO IDEA how to take care of it, the manual confused the hell out of me so I would just tickle it and pet it till it made noise, little did I know that it WOULD NEVER SHUT THE FUCK UP. I wrapped that thing in a blanket and buried it in the dresser so I could sleep at night. I was definitely convinced mine was possessed by Satan.

 3.   L’Oreal Kids Shampoo (No tears!)

There is a soap scent at my work called “pear berries” that I would keep smelling because it brought me back to childhood but I didn’t know why, and then a woman shopping saved my life and said that it smelled like the l’oreal kids shampoo. MY MIND EXPLODED. I was suddenly brought back to bath time and rolling around nakey with rubber toys in bubbly warm water as my mom struggled getting me to sit still so she can scrub that pear scented deliciousness in my ginger locks.

 4.     Harry Potter

When this came into my life I was INVESTED. I was basically MARRIED to this world. I’m surprised I wasn’t put into a mental institution that is the level of DEEP my mind was in it. My cousins and I pretended in my room that we were at Hogwarts, and I was always Harry because duh. We used my encyclopedias as charms and transfiguration books, we used pencils as wands and I swear to god my mind brought me there. It really felt like I was at Hogwarts and I wish my mind could do that magic now. I was playing PlayStation games of Harry Potter, computer games, reading the books and watching the movies religiously, and you can tell because my sorcerer’s stone dvd skips at almost every scene and my books look like they have survived a flash flood (which actually happened) and been ran over by a truck. I have a Harry Potter tattoo now… IT IS PART OF ME.

5.     *NSync

Nsync was probably the beginnings to my unhealthy infatuations as a child. Justin Timberlake was my first celebrity crush ever and I thought he was the most beautiful and talented thing I had EVER seen. When he falls from the sky in “Bye Bye Bye” and lands like Spiderman and then chuckles I still collapse and melt into a puddle. I JUST saw his 20/20 Experience concert– my first time seeing him live for the first time, and I gotta tell you I was 7 years old again that night, I should have been embarrassed but pff no. Nsync had the best songs, dance moves, outfits and music videos. If anyone tried telling me Backstreet Boys were better I would get worked up and yell at their face and run and cry in the bathroom. THAT IS HOW MUCH I CARED FOR THOSE BOYS, cuz they’re ma boys. *tear*

6.     Lite Brite

Oh my god this contraption was amazing. I would spend hours upon hours poking those cool clear colorful plastic pegs into the holes, watching them pop out and drop, putting them back in, and then watching them fall out again when my hand accidentally hit the board the wrong way. Those things were hard work, my fingers remember the pain of constantly holding those little suckers, and they would find their way EVERYWHERE in the house.

7.     Amazon Trail

Many might have played “Oregon trail” instead, but Amazon was very similar. This computer game was intense. You are in this canoe and your mission is to basically discover shit. I remember taking it very seriously. You have to first off know where your rowing to (which I got lost many times), you got to go fishing with a spear and discover new fish and eat the fish and TRADE the fish with villagers. You go through jungles with just a flashlight and find new animals. I remember getting trapped at one village by this evil man and it was the SCARIEST thing ever.

8.     Playgrounds

There was this elaborate HUGE wooden playground I would always go to that must have taken so much mind power to create because there were so many secret entry ways and passages and holes to go through and things to climb it was almost overwhelming for my adventurous and curious soul. There were like three towers and I didn’t even figure out how to get up one of them yet because I didn’t even get that far into exploring the playground the last two times I was there… that is how insane it was! There were so many spaces to squeeze through and I remember constantly hitting my head on the dark wood so many times when I played there because that’s how challenging it was. I wouldn’t be surprised if a child just got lost inside and didn’t know how to get out. It probably happened.

9.      Avril Lavigne 

This girl saved me from wanting to be slutty like Brittany Spears and put me in check. So thank you, Avril for doing that for me. I went from wanting to wear belly shirts and glitter in my hair to sporting wristbands and side ways hats and neckties and band t-shirts with a tough girl attitude. I just wanted to rock and flip the whole world off saying GIRLS CAN BE BADASS TOO. I stopped caring and screamed “WHY SHOULD I CARE” and “WHY YA HAVE TO GO AND MAKE THINGS SO COMPLICATED” But for real, why?

10.     Mermaid Lyfe 

I bet I am not the only girl who pretended she was a mermaid in the pool. Ariel was my favorite Disney princess because duh she was the only princess with red hair because of that I swore we were connected. I would swim underwater with my feet together flappin’ my feet like fins and emerge from the water over dramatically and flip my hair back and sing “ah a ahh, ah a ahh, ah a ahh ah a ah a ahh!” like the totally cool person I am.

I hope you found all these very entertaining. This post took me way longer than I thought to write out (about 4 hours) and I still have homework to do. I think I had enough nostalgia for the day, but its nice to reflect on all the good times once in a while and get a little depressed inside about it, but initially they make you smile, and that tells you something.