You know you're a 90's kid when...

Are you sick of all these Justin Bieber listening, Rastamouse watching douche bags?

"Those aren't my cultural reference points!" I hear you whine like a prick.

They missed out on the golden age of growing up didn't they? The 90's! That's where it's located! Oh snap, Take a Chill Pill, All That AND Chips, Don't Go There Girlfriend because You Are Da Bomb.

But how do you know if you're a 90's kid? You can't just take the year you were born and figure out if your childhood and the 90's coincided as “science” would have you believe. 

No, you have to LIKE and SHARE this list with all your 90's friends otherwise you WEREN'T a 90's kid! 

Come on, you may only be in your 20's now, but lets try and manufacture some artificial nostalgia for a decade that only ended 13 years ago and LIKE and SHARE this list or your nan will die and WON'T bring Gavin and Stacey back! She'll be dead, how would she? She simply wouldn't be able to.

25 Signs you're a 90's Kid!

1) You can't resist finishing this- “Iiin West Philadelphia born and raised!” It's actually a really serious illness. If you don't sing the next line your immune system begins to shut down, if treatment (singing the next line) is not forthcoming symptoms develop into something similar to African Trypanosomiasis or "Sleeping Sickness."

2) You had a massive crush on Robson or Jerome and would argue with your friends about which one was the dreamiest.

3) Before you watched a video you remember the short recording of King VHS wishing you well in his kingdom of film and hoping you enjoy the feature.

4) When I was your age I wasn't pushing a pram I was eating a MAOAM!

5) You remember the day it turned out Tamagotchis were actually a sentient organism.

6) You remember the day it turned out a Tamagotchi was actually a type of very small horse.

7) You remember the day it turned out Tamagotchis were self aware and capable of human emotions.

8) You remember the day Tamagotchis enslaved all of mankind and forced us to feed them nondescript cubes of food and clean up giant mountains of their shit and then play with them/train them depending on the model.

9) You remember the day we all remembered that if we stopped feeding and petting the Tamagotchis they just died within a few days.

10) You remember 8 million attending the “never again” Tamogotchi peace march. You remember the relief, the joy, the pain, the songs, the floral tributes and the burying of the dead.

11) You remember that time period after Mike Tyson was convicted of rape but before we all decided that that's fine now and cast him in a hilarious and charming buddy movie.

12) You remember the great trading card crash when the value of Pokeman cards plummeted and people were pushing around wheelbarrows full of football stickers just to buy a pint of milk.

13) You remember watching Jumanji and asking your dad to buy you the board game but he told you it didn't exist and all the grown ups around the table laughed ha fucking ha.

14) Slap Bracelets were all the rage. Slap Scarves, Hats and Shorts didn't catch on. Slap Hijabs were a public relations disaster

15) The only books you liked were Goosebumps. Now as an adult you have a deep seated hatred of reading and like Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and Frank Turner instead.

16) You remember Round The Twist, a searing and unsettling portrait of mental illness set in a lighthouse for some kooky reason

17) You remember when it was actually worth getting up early on a Saturday because you were a child and life seemed full of excitement and possibility, not a dirge of tedium and pain.

18) Because technology wasn't as good then no-one was even slightly materialistic and everyone was happy with all their toys. If you look at kids today they're always looting ipads in Tottenham, in OUR day we were happy with whatever we had!

19) If you didn't have a Nokia 32.10 you were NO-ONE and you could fuck off mate.

20) George Martin IS the sixth Backstreet Boy.

21) You remember a time before Blogs! The equivalent of a Blog was a Dairylea Lunchable! Podcasts were two cups on a string.

22) Your favourite Disney Princess was Princess Diana.

23) Freddos cost less than they do now! Everything cost less. It was the past.

24) You know the Spice Girls were a girl group. If you said "Spice Girls" to kids today they'd probably think of a Hareem of ethnic porn stars or some kind of set of cumin figurines probably!

25) You read through endless lists about the 90's and say "oh yeah I do remember that."

The Greatest Social Injustice of the 20th Century Part 2

Part 2. The Shard of Broken Glass

I grew up in rural North Yorkshire. It was a lovely way to spend a childhood and a beautiful place to live, if very rural. The nearest town was 12 miles away and transport links were scant and mistrusted. There was no live music or live comedy. There was livestock but that is not as good. All our school field trips were trips to actual fields, to help out with the Spring harvest because farmer Mansfield had got drunk off moonshine scrumpy and accidentally ripped off both legs off in a threshing machine again.

Ol' Clumsy Mansfield was just one of the many, what were kindly referred to as “characters”.

I also remember a time when a young teacher, who had grown up in a town, came to teach IT and all the parents were so suspicious of his computer that they put him in a giant wicker man shaped like a Commodore 64 and only let him out again when he gave some trinkets he'd bought from a nearby Morrison’s to the village elders in a bizarre three hour ceremony involving candles, twelve virgin goats and an effigy of popular entertainer Robson Green.

One of my school friends was at such a loss for something to do one summer that he spent the whole holiday digging a big hole in his garden and then when it was finished he just went and sat in it and drank Babycham he'd stolen from his parents drinks cabinet. 

(I'm not even joking about that last one, my mum came to pick me up one day and found us both in this massive, unstable crater in the ground and told me I couldn't go round there any more and that one day I'd understand why, that day has arrived.)

But I digress in a way that sets the scene...

The greatest social injustice of the 20^th century (yes including that one) happened when I was in year 7. I was happily walking from Remedial Calf Birthing on my way to Applied Being Suspicious of Outsiders when I noticed a small piece of glass on the floor, possibly from a bottle, possibly not. Being a conscientious little boy, I picked up the piece of glass and took it over to the bin to safely dispose of it. Pausing only to jokingly threaten one of my best friends in a way that was clearly a joke and only a stupid, and probably now ex maths teacher, would ever misconstrue as anything else.

So half an hour later I was sitting alone in the headmistresses office, teary eyed and scared. I had a form in front of me and had been instructed to write my own account of why I had been pulled out of lessons for threatening to murder a fellow student in cold blood with a broken shard of glass that, as far as Mrs Harborne could tell, I had smashed myself. I was only 11 but even I knew things had looked better. 

I was scared, confused and annoyed and in no state to come up with a witty, sardonic response like that one about making an ass out of you and me. So I wrote a pathetic whimpering apology to all concerned and explained that I was a nice boy really.

But I've had 14 solid years of stewing the bitter curds of resentment and fermenting the curdled grapes of injustice. I've been supping shame from the broken cup of heartache and chewing on the couscous of misery. For pudding I've been dining alone on a flambéed banana of psychological scarring and vomiting back up cheese course after cheese course of mistrust of authority figures. 

It is an unsatisfying meal filled only with the empty calories of hurt and of no nutritional value.

To exorcise my demons I have written a letter to my old school. I am hopeful this will put right the greatest injustice of the 20^th century (still yes).

Dear Mrs Harborne and Mr Byrne,

Hello. Gareth here. You probably don't remember me because I came to what you call a secondary school in 2001 and then left again in 2003 to move to Birmingham. The reason I am writing to you in newspaper cuttings and blood is to rectify the greatest injustice of the 20^th century (yes including that one) where you gave me detention and sent me home early for allegedly threatening a child with glass.

I have several problems with your accusation. First right, why would I even want to stab my friend Harry? As far as I can recall we were like best mates and got on like a house on fire. And even if I did want to do him harm why would I wait upon a chance encounter with a tiny piece of glass by the netball courts? I find it insulting that you think I would take such a slapdash approach to a brutal playground shanking. I find it insulting that you considered me not only a potential psychotic killer but the sort of incompetent, ad-hoc psychotic killer that stumbles upon their opportunity without thinking it through.

I don't know if you've read We Need to Talk about Kevin but in it Kevin doesn't just stumble across his weapon on the way to his lessons, and think “fuck it, when in Rome.” He premeditates the whole thing. He really puts some thought into it and does it based on a symbolic moment from his childhood in a satisfying literary device. That's what I would do if I was going to do a high school massacre. But I wasn't going to do one anyway.

 

Also while we're on the subject maybe if the Dinner Ladies that you employed had been doing their bloody job rather than smoking rollies round the back of cricket pavilion and bitching about their ex husbands this whole sorry situation would never have happened. Maybe it was ill advised to pick up the glass myself but come on, I was 11 years old and they were in their forties probably.

The problem, Mrs. Harborne, is that you saw me with a shard of glass and assumed the worst. And what happens when you assume? That's right, you make an ass out of you and me. You also generalised the children in your care as thugs. And what happens when you generalise? That's right, they're general lies.

Fortunately I'm not the litigious, violent or arsonist type otherwise you'd currently be finding yourself in a whole world of pain, lawsuits and fire. What you may not know is that I write an incredibly successful and popular blog, and I doubt my legions of fans are going to be happy when they hear what happened to me. I don't wish to alarm or threaten you so all I'll say is "Rodney King". I think you know what I mean.

All I require is a full apology in writing and I will call them off.

Thank you for your attention, or whatever the Yorkshire equivalent of attention is. Being arrogant yet surly probably.

Yours

Tedious Clown (Gareth Edwards from class 1b)  

The Greatest Social Injustice of the 20th Century

Part 1- The Party

It's a well documented fact that you're always clever after the event. Whenever you're in a conversational sparring match, a round of witticism fencing at a swanky drinks reception (which is the sort of place I hang out now, I'm not showing off) you'll always think of that killer comeback line too late. Usually on the bus home or as you're falling asleep or punching the shower curtain with fury that what you came up with at the time was so cack-handed and clumsy in comparison to the solid gold put down you've only now thought up.

The other week I was at a party held by a friend and the conversation turned to my blog as it inevitably does at parties. This is because I try and fit the words “tedious” and “clown” into any conversation as much as possible until someone has to acknowledge it. I also shout “BLOG” whenever I cough and put the page up on people's iPhones when they go to the toilet. Sometimes I'll arrange the Twiglets and Cheese Straws into quotes of things I've written and then gesture people to the snacks table and ask them to pass me a Twiglet or Cheese Straw.

So we were all having a lovely chat about my blog and laughing and slapping me on the back as usual when this girl that I'd never really met before chimed in,

“Oh you write a blog do you?” she said, stupidly, “I find all that stuff a bit passé these days. What's yours about, not another navel gazing series of self deprecating posts that resemble short stories but aren't quite good enough?”

Now I freely admit my response to this wasn't as shimmering with linguistic panache as perhaps it could have been. I also accept that, despite my remonstrations at the time, my wrist probably didn't undergo a freak muscle spasm and the way my gin and tonic was flung into her stupid trendy face was not without malice. I can also only apologise for the way I knocked the cucumber sandwich our of her hand and I agree you're not really supposed to use the words “Backwards Philistine Fuck wit” at a party with friends. 

However, I said it at the time and I'll say it again as I feel the sentiment still rings true,

“Come on, it's not like I've punched anyone so everyone just get off my case and where are those vol-au-vents that were on that table earlier because they were nice.”

So I apologise again to Lila. I'm also sorry about what happened to your car but that wasn't me; where would I even get a spray can at that time of night in that part of London?

But this whole frustrating incident that ultimately was no-one's fault got me thinking, it can't just be me who always thinks of the perfect thing to say after the event? As I was outside the party having a cigarette and a “long hard look at myself” whatever that means, and also not writing “stupid judgemental hipster twat” on anyone's car I thought of what I should have said.

When she uttered those cruel, vindictive and incorrect words I should have smiled, had a small sip from my drink and then stared into the distance for a moment as though remembering a childhood sweetheart fondly and then finally looked back at her and said,
 

“Well actually madam, I think you'll find you are making a big assumption there, and what happens when you assume? That's right, you make an ass out of you and me. You are also making a generalisation and what happens when you generalise? That's right they are General Lies. And quite frankly m'Lady you are clearly so prone to generalisation and assumption that if it were a wing of the military you probably would be made general and then given the Victoria Cross for services to pre-judging and then be made Field Marshall for bravery in the face of having an open mind about people's blogs. I thank you.”

And then I'd have downed my drink and moonwalked out of the room whilst everyone at the party gave me a heartfelt standing ovation and she felt stupid without having to be covered in gin.

It wasn't until I was drifting off into an angry sleep that night that I remembered another incident in my life where I wish I'd thought of something witty to say. The incident also happens to be the greatest social injustice of the 20^th century.

Yes, including that one.

And I will not rest until it has been rectified. I think there's definitely a sub par Danny Wallace style book in it.

TO BE CONTINUED....