IF YOU were self-respecting and had indulgent parents then for much of the 1990s you carried around a small plastic egg in which lived your raison d'etre:
a digital pet to be fed, pooper-scooped and tucked in at night. Tamagotchis taught us young people about portable electronic devices and self-absorption, leading us, the children of the 90s, easily to the adoption of Facebook, Twitter et al.
The digital devices, like so much, were more rudimentary in the 90s. For your average kid, the pace was slower all round. We wrote thank you letters, not emails. The Top 40 was diligently recorded on cassette tapes. If you wanted individual tracks you would have to wait patiently by the hi-fi, hovering over the Play and Record buttons, for your DJ of choice to play the song.
Plans, once made, could not be changed because there was no way of contacting the other party, bar the landline.
I read this week that parents have voted a variety of the simple pleasures of the 90s their most missed childhood experiences. Terrifying to think that "parents surveyed" are now my peers.
Ah, the 90s childhood. We were seldom bored because everything took so long. Watching a new release required tracking down someone with a membership card they were willing to loan out before a walk/bike ride to the video shop.
Photographs, unless you were rich enough to pay for 24-hour developing, took a week to see.
Television, long before the advent of concerns about privacy and inappropriate internet liasons, taught us that climbing in and out of our neighbours' window was not an invasion of boundaries but totally charming. Thank you, Dawson and Sam, those were more innocent days.
Leonardo di Caprio was the shining sun around whom all our fluttering, developing desires orbited. Will Smith rapped and girls wore slap bracelets and scrunchies, while boys suffered bowl cuts.
There were stick-on earrings, mood rings and tattoo jewellery. You fell into factions: Backstreet Boys or *NSYNC, Britney or Christina.
It was the time of utterly pointless collecting. What was the purpose of pogs? Or Trolls? Or Beanie Babies? If it was too wet outside for your Skip-it or rollerblades you could stay in and read a Goosebumps, unless you'd graduated to Point Horror.
The 90s children's summers were the smell of the Velcro on a Scatch.
Finally, only we know the true meaning of Mmmbop, ba duba dop and we will never tell. Never.
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