Childhood Things I Miss

The Nostalgia of the 2000s kid

For reference, I was born in 1998. I remember sometimes I took pride in saying I was born in the 90’s. The 90’s was iconic. But growing up in the 2000s, where parts of the 90’s bled into the new era but rebuilt itself into the new age of technology, was an experience I’ll never forget.

Reading Dictionaries for Fun

No one in my class looked at me and thought, “Wow that activity looks SO FUN, let’s join her!” Sometimes I’d just sit in the corner and look up meanings of weird, whimsical and funny works in the English language. At the beginning of high school, me and my best friend would run about using these fun words repetitively. It was like our special language that no one had bothered to understand. Our lunchtimes consisted of stealing the whiteboard marker from the English classroom and writing Words of the Day on the whiteboard like we were Banksy. Like okay? Weirdos! Nerds! But we kept doing it anyway. The teacher appreciated our attempt at educating the masses.

Books? Books!

Give me a book and I’ll flick through it even if it’s not my taste. Even the worst books are strangely fascinating. Sometimes a book is better than facing the weird, big world of Socialising. I spent a lot of my childhood reading Nancy Drew, Enid Blyton, the Animal Ark books, the Rainbow Magic series, the Mary-Kate and Ashley books and Roald Dahl. I also loved anything Biology, History and animal related. Fascinating. Libraries were my obsession.

I’ve always had music

When I was young, I always had a music player. My first music player was a little pink Sanyo boombox. I have memories of dancing to the sound of the stereo with my best friends. Sometimes we’d exchange CDs or burn MP3s onto blank CDs. Or we’d just listen to the latest hits on the radio.

Not mine, but the exact model. And pink, because at the time all I wanted was pink.

I found music channels on TV more interesting than TV itself somedays. MTV and Juice TV was the place to be.

Once I got older I got one of those little tube music players with the tiny digital screen. I worked out how to download free MP3s online by the age of 8. (And safely, somehow, since the LimeWire craze was before my time.) Usually you have to step your way through bad recordings, songs with the intro of the radio at the start of the song and funny little quirks. But I usually found my way around. Today, the shame of downloading music for free has permeated society, but back then, everyone did it. Today, I just use Spotify and started collecting vinyl records so I can still feel that old school connection to music.

DVD Stores

I miss DVD Stores. So bad. Watching DVD Stores close down over the past decade was the most heartbreaking thing to watch. My friends and family would make a Friday night of visiting the DVD shop. Cheap weekly movie rentals, usually a big section of American candy (as a New Zealander, a million miles from the rest of the world, overseas candy was special), and hundreds of snacks, colourful movie posters plastered on the walls. The rows of shelves of DVDs, VHS and even video games. Weekend movie nights were like the end of week treat.

The erasure of the DVD player over the years has kind of diminished the experience of movie watching. Don’t get me wrong, the ease of streaming is amazing, but watching Netflix trump over the humble Civic Video, Blockbuster and United Video of my hometown is like being stripped away from everything you ever knew. I’m sorry Netflix. I’m low key mad.

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