Remember the days when our biggest worry was whether we had enough floppy disks to save our five-paragraph essays on World War II? Ah, yes, the sweet smell of nostalgia wafts in the air like a half-eaten bag of Funyuns. Back when we had a solid excuse for every time we forgot to turn in homework—“Sorry, Mr. Jenkins, my dog ate my floppy disk!” It was an age when computer crashes were basically the apocalypse, and we thought a virus was just a common cold. If you could get through life with a less-than-perfect disc, you were basically a techno-maverick, ready to invent the next big thing—like, I don't know, using two VHS players to make a mixtape.
Let’s take a moment to appreciate how our Go-Go Gadget brains had to logically strategize the pitfalls of the Pink Floyd "The Wall" cassette player. Pressing the 'record' button was akin to risking your social life: if anyone walked in while you were taping "Smells Like Teen Spirit," your emotional rollercoaster hit a brick wall quicker than Sonic the Hedgehog. And what genius thought it was a good idea to use a pencil to rewind those cassette tapes? I mean, nothing screams “I have my life together” quite like a half-eaten slice of pizza next to a pencil that doubles as a tape rewinder. Sure, we were adolescents with chaotic hair and questionable fashion choices, but you better believe that our mixtapes were the stuff of legend—like Bigfoot, or your neighbor’s questionable choice to decorate their house in inflatable Christmas decorations year-round.
What were we even doing in a world that demanded we stay organized? We had to maintain a delicate ecosystem of CD-ROMs, bigger-than-necessary backpacks, and attempting to juggle friendship groups while thinking our biggest threat was “being seen wearing last year’s Doc Martens.” Who knew that a simple slip of paper with a reminder would be a thing of the past? Today, our schedules are so meticulously organized that if a pop-up alert doesn't ding, we might as well have missed the sad reunion of the Backstreet Boys. I still get the chills thinking about trying to land your first email address—deciding between “coolgirl123” and “theclevergamer” was tougher than picking a favorite episode of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”
So here we stand, survivors of a lost age, forever lamenting the absence of floppy disks and complimentary AOL CDs at the grocery store. As we scroll through our social media feeds filled with filtered photos and influencers hawking a kale smoothie that could probably solve all of life’s mysteries, let us raise a glass of Tab (or whatever fizzy concoction they’re marketing these days) to our forever-jaded hearts. Here’s to the 80s and 90s: when simplicity was king, and Ben Stiller was still just that guy from “Reality Bites.” Cheers!