owlolive

5 Things From My Generation I’ll Have To Explain to My Kids

So there’s this Arabic hashtag #أنا_من_جيل (I am the generation of…) that’s been trending on Twitter lately in which everyone kind of lists the stuff that really defined their childhoods and their experiences growing up. And, of course, me being the most nostalgic and sentimental human being on this planet it reminded me of about a million things that really defined my late 80s/early 90s generation and that have now been replaced by the new fads and trends of these goddamn kids! Yeah, I’m channeling my inner scrooge.

And, to make myself feel even more old and sad, I came up with a list of stuff from my childhood which I know I’m going to have to explain to my children in excessive detail one day before they look at me funny, scratch their heads in confusion, and dart their eyes back to the paper-thin iPad 5 nestled in their laps. That is if the iPad doesn’t become obsolete by then.

So here is a nostalgic list of the awesome stuff which, at one point in time, defined my generation but have now been long gone:

1. Floppy Disks – Ok, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve only come upon the invention of the USB drive quite recently. Like in the last 6 years or so. When I graduated high school, it had barely just come out. My entire class submitted their IT practical final exams on floppy disks. I remember my father literally had hundreds of them neatly packed into little plastic cases, and I remember whenever we wanted to install a bootlegged version of Windows 95 on our computers we’d have to use about 20 different floppies in a specific order before we could get the damn thing to work. Now, if you were to show a 10 year old kid a floppy disk they might think it was a lame kind of Frisbee or perhaps a coaster of some sort…
2. TAMAGOTCHIS – You know, those tiny portable, egg like devices in which lived creatures that you had to nurture and feed and play with and love with every bit of your soul. Every single kid in school had a Tamagotchi creature. There was the dragon, the fat squirrel, the purple puma… every mystical creature/animal hybrid you could imagine. I swear, I took that thing with me everywhere. I used to spend hours making sure my baby dragon was sound asleep and did not need a diaper change. The day it grew from a baby dragon to, well, a toddler dragon WAS A DAY TO REJOICE AND BE MERRY.
3. Gel Pens – OH MY GOD. I still get giddy thinking about the way I used to decorate the front of my school notebooks with these sparkly, neon-colored squiggles and patterns which I thought were so creative. Literally everyone in my 7th grade class had a collection of gel pens with which we would mark our names on our stationary satchels. And, of course, every letter of your name had to be in a different gel color cause otherwise you were just not cool.
4. VHS Tapes – The VHS tape has basically gone the route of the floppy disk. It’s probably not as extinct and wiped out but its definitely on the endangered list. I’m sure that within a couple of years (at most) it’ll turn into an ancient relic as well. But I can’t help fondly recalling the moments when we used to open up the film cassette cover and blow on it to make sure it wasn’t dirty. Or the times we’d have to yank it out of the VHS player when it went crazy and crumpled up the film. Then of course we’d have to turn the huge, unwieldy screw on the side for an hour before all the tape was back inside. Ah, the muscle-wielding memories!
5. MSN and Chatrooms – Now, I’m sure that there are still people who use MSN (or Yahoo or AOL or whatever) from time to time and who grace the lonely and creepy world of chatrooms but they are a dieing breed. With the introduction of the iPhone and the BlackBerry instant messaging has taken on a very portable meaning with things like Whatsapp and BBM. And then you’ve got the advent of social networking sites (a la Twitter and Facebook) which has completely transformed the ways in which whole groups of people can connect with one another on a very personal level. Gone are the days of coming up with a wacky, adolescent, yet distinctive email address (which you will later embarrassingly regret). Now, if anyone asks for your email its not because they want to hit you up on MSN. It’s because they want to be all grown up and mature and send you long PDF documents.

Boy, do I feel young and cool right about now.

All my love!