Ah, the 80s and 90s—the golden era when life felt like a mixtape comprised of endless montage scenes complete with synth music, hair as high as the Empire State Building, and enough neon to power a small city. We didn't have smartphones to distract us; instead, we relied on our trusty VHS tapes to watch "The Breakfast Club" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" until the tapes began to show more wear than we did on a Saturday night after a few too many Zima’s. What a time to be alive! Or, more accurately, half-alive and fully caffeinated on a smoothie of 50% Kool-Aid and 50% sugar from the 3-pound bag we bought at Costco.
Remember waking up early Saturday mornings, sliding into a pair of acid-washed jeans (which, let’s be honest, also served as an emergency flotation device), and plopping down in front of the tube to devour your bowl of cereal? No matter how many times we nearly choked on a spoonful of Lucky Charms while catching a glimpse of a poorly animated Smurf, we still kept that breakfast tradition alive. It was a time when cartoon characters taught us valuable life skills, like how to effectively dodge your parent’s request to “clean your room” or how to perfectly execute the perfect cool-guy smirk like Kirk Cameron did in “Growing Pains.”
Let’s not even get started on fashion. I mean, who could forget the glorious joy of layering your clothing like a human cake? A flannel over a graphic tee, all capped off with a denim jacket that had more patches than an epidural patch on a hardcore runner. And the hair? Oh boy—bigger was always better, and the air was thick enough with hairspray that you could practically sweep at a tiny shuttle launch. All we needed to complete the look was a Walkman perpetually strapped to our sides, blasting the latest hits from Madonna and the Backstreet Boys, while we practiced our best dance moves in the reflection of a neon-lit convenience store window.
But the pinnacle of Gen-X glory was undoubtedly our mastery of the art of sarcasm—always dipped in that bittersweet nostalgia like a stale Twinkie we fished out from the bottom of the backpack we swore we’d clean out “later.” Now that we're grown-ups (or at least we pretend to be), we find ourselves caught in a trap of existential crises, sharing memes that remind us how we once paid for things with actual cash and learned how to really connect with people without the aid of a Bluetooth device. So here's to an era of pop culture insanity that shaped our awkward, teenage selves—because at the end of the day, nothing says adulthood like telling your kids how you walked uphill both ways to school while simultaneously longing for that neon paradise once more… preferably with a side of Dunkaroos.