Obscure Questions For If You Grew Up In The ’90s

Did you ever get in trouble for looking under your desk not to text your friend, but to make sure you fed your Tamagotchi and/or Giga Pet?

Do you ever miss riding your bikes around the neighborhood while your parents stayed in the backyard to sit and chat? Would you ever wonder how adults could simply sit and chat while you were off having a blast making up new games on the fly? Now as an adult, do you ever also wonder how you had all of that energy as a kid to keep running all day long?

Would your lunch sometimes only be a few pickles or a cold-cut sandwich so you could run back outside to play?

Did you ever have nightmares from the images on the back of VHS sleeves in the horror section of your local video store or Blockbuster? Would you hate that, but still somehow find yourself being lured back to that aisle to find something even creepier or scarier? Would you stare at it and wonder what your problem was/ why you weren’t moving on to a happier section of the store?

Had you ever seen Gremlins (or any PG/ PG13 rated movie) on TV and felt like you were breaking the rules because it looked too scary and you didn’t want your parents to find out you had been watching it? Would you also ever sit through the static bars of PG13 movies like Deep Blue Sea on the channels that your parents didn’t pay for just to try and catch glimpses of it?

Would you ever wake up super early in the morning to turn the TV on only to find boring aerobics videos, but then found yourself doing the exercises along with them? Did your parents have a Denise Austin VHS tape?

More specifically, did they have the Kickin’ With Country one? If so, how much did you love the end where you got to dance to Achey Breakey Heart along with her? (Not going to lie, I’m pretty pumped that’s available on YouTube)

Were you saddened by Princess Diana’s passing, even if you didn’t really know who she was?

Did you ever want Clarissa’s hoop belt but were just a little too young for accessories like that, and knew that your Mom would never get one for you?

Did you ever wish to be a contestant on Global Guts or Legends Of The Hidden Temple? If so, which color/ team would you have wanted to be? (Blue barracudas or red jaguars FTW)

Would you get mad at the commercials on Nickelodeon that would tell you to go outside and play during rainy days because you definitely otherwise spent enough time outside swimming?

Did you get to have Lunchables for lunch at school and realize it really wasn’t that great?

Did you have snack time in elementary school? (is this still a thing?)

Did you fall in love with gymnastics after watching the Magnificent Seven win the Olympic gold on home turf in Atlanta? Did your parents let you stay up late to watch Keri Strug’s vault? Obligatory follow-up: Even though it’s remembered as a heroic Olympic moment, does it make you cringe after learning more about the Karolyis?

Had you tried begging your parents to let you go see Titanic because you had a couple of friends whose parents let them go see it in theaters?

Did you have a crush on Leonardo DiCaprio from that movie without even seeing it, and without even otherwise knowing anything about him?

Did you have a crush on any of the Hanson brothers, even if you thought they were girls the first time you heard them?

Would you pretend to hate your parents’ taste in music, even though you secretly loved it?

Did you ever receive any Yikes pencils as party favors from a birthday party and feel as cool as a contestant winning some on a Nickelodeon gameshow?

Did you ever play the board games Girl Talk or Mall Madness at sleepovers?

Would you ever play games in the pool with your friends like answering the question as fast as you can while jumping into the deep end (not sure what that game was actually called, maybe just “Questions”)?

Did you have a Skip-it? What color was it? Do you remember your highest score? Do you wish you kinda still had one today to increase your daily step count? (I might order one for myself after writing this…)

Would you ever play cats cradle with others, or only individually? What was the most complex design you would make out of it?

Were you more of a fan of The Babysitter’s Club, or Babysitter’s Little Sister? What about The Boxcar Children, or the Nancy Drew series?

Did you love the Scholastic Book Fair, even though you might not have loved reading as a young kid?

Would you stir mud in a beach pale with your friends in the backyard, call it Witch’s Stew, and expect it to magically turn into something overnight?

Would you ever sit in your bedroom with the lights off, hoping that the inside of your Little Golden Books would light up like the picture of the two kids on the back cover? (maybe that wasn’t Little Golden Books, might be mistaking it for Disney. If so, oops).

Did you love playing with glow-in-the-dark nerf footballs?

Did your neighborhood get together for backyard tee ball games?

Did your neighborhood have annual block parties? If so, did you have bike parades where you’d decorate your bikes with streamers and balloons? Did your neighbors have a smaller get-together for those who wanted more the next day to eat the leftovers and have brunch?

Do you remember being shocked when you heard kids saying swear words in middle school? Do you remember the shock of everything from the transition from elementary to middle school, actually?

Do you remember kind of liking the MCAS in 4th grade because you got to have a Nutrigrain bar beforehand? Did you ask your parents for Nutrigrain bars from the grocery store after being introduced to them?

Did you build huts in the woods out of long sticks and twigs?

When AOL came out, did your parents let you have a screenname? Did you use the original AOL instant messenger pre-AIM? If so, would you agree that the AOL instant messenger send-message sound is SO much better than the AIM send-message sound (to compare, here’s the original @ 0:42 seconds)?

Do you remember needing to wait 5–6 minutes for an entire website like the Space Jam or Nickelodeon sites to load?

Did you try wearing lip gloss in middle school, even though the flavor was disgusting and you hated how gooey it ended up feeling?

Did the Spice Girls redefine what it meant to dance in your bedroom?

Would you have SNICK and TGIF-themed sleepovers?

What other questions do you have now that you’d ask your 90s self?