We all have a To-Do List, and every time we make one, there is always something that we inevitably push off to the end. In my case, it was cleaning up the storage room in my apartment.
After months of “surface” organization, I got off my lazy ass this week and put in some real time. Having accumulated an array of materials from when I had first begun my undergraduate studies (and prior), what was expected to be a painful process turned out to be very enjoyable.
Among the mislabeled cardboard and storage boxes, I found an assortment of items that served as references to various trinkets from the ’90s and early 2000s (my childhood and teenage years) in what now seems to be a lost time.
I was hard-pressed to choose my top 10 favorites (in no particular order) in what I found. For those readers among my audience who were born in the ’90s (and possibly earlier) I hope we share common grounds in relating to these memories.
(1) Dial-Up Internet & MSN Messenger
The iconic screeching sounds of connecting (and re-connecting) to the World Wide Web so that I could chat with my friends via MSN Messenger after school is an enduring memory. I used MSN Messenger up till 2011 (when I was in the second year of my undergraduate studies at university) by which point it was done and dusted and Facebook had taken over.
(2) Trackballs/Boxed Computers/Floppy Disks
My family had one shared PC system hosting Windows XP and man was it the hoot to get some game time on it. The trackballs would get broken often and replacements were a frequent necessity. Floppy disks were the fashion while I was in elementary school, and it wasn’t until middle school (around 2006) that I got my hands on CDs (700 MB were certainly big storage back then), but it wouldn’t be long till the USBs (and the GIGA-bytes) came into fashion.
(3) Cassette Players/Discman
On that vein, I would carry cassette players and discman all the way up to my early high-school years. These were the bomb, and unlike my first I-pod which seemed so fragile, these looked like they could withstand anything (and on many occasions, did).
(4) Boxed Television
Not much different from the boxed computers. Boxed TVs were the fashion in my family until only very recently. In fact, the basement I lived in a few years ago, had a boxed TV that was compatible with my PS3. The graphics, on the other hand, were certainly not.
(5) 240p/360p
Kids these days make too much of a fuss for videos that lack 1080p resolution. Back in my days, 144p was the king. Our eyes never really necessitated the measurement of focusing on resolution until the culture of pixel diversity kicked in.
(6) Siruvar Malar
A callback to my childhood in India, I grew up reading the Tamil counterpart of what were children’s newspapers/comics. These magazines were my weekly entertainment and would be delivered with the Friday newspapers. The magazines would be peppered with folktales, crossword puzzles, brain twisters, and just about everything that made a kid happy. My grandfather collected over thousands of these magazines in what was a treasure trove of memories that I shared with him in my childhood. I can certainly attribute the origin of my aspirations to become a writer and comic-book artist to these magazines.
(7) Spinning Tops /Beyblade
In my hometown of Madurai, India, you weren’t a cool kid if you didn’t know how to spin a top. I would spend many hours learning the art, much of which initially involved slamming the top on the ground, before eventually becoming a street master. Dueling tops in my childhood in the ’90s would later transform into my love for Beyblade in the early 2000s.
(8) Slap Bracelets + Tazos
While I didn’t get to wear a watch frequently, I did get to wear these slap bracelets along with a few of my “bracelet buddies” throughout my middle school days in the early 2000s. I would also host a gigantic collection of tazos during the Nintendo Pokemon craze of that time period. My family lived in Egypt back then, and unfortunately, my mother would throw the tazos away prior to our departure from the country. Despite their loss, I will always remember the memorable fights I had with my younger sister bargaining between Pokemon tazos as we became Lays chips (through which they were promoted) junkies.
(9) Multicolored Pens
As a kid, I felt a certain amount of authority after buying a multicolored pen, especially when I had been frequently told that red/green/blue colored pens could only be utilized by teachers! These pens were just that cool. Even now, I would love to buy one just for the sake of it.
(10) Simpler Pleasures
In conclusion, I got my storage sorted out, and in return inherited a flood of nostalgia on the simple pleasures that is my experience of the ’90s and early 2000s.
The Pensive Reverie 