For all the fondness I hold for them, the ‘90s really were a bastion of weirdness. From the odd things we found satisfying to the strange things we were obsessed with, it really epitomized the word “weird” — but honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s probably why I also have such a soft spot for the impressive array of weird habits ‘90s kids had. Don’t lie; you know you were guilty of at least some of them. I know I was — but you know what? "Guilty" actually isn’t the right word. By and large, they were about having fun for fun’s sake, and everybody could use a little more fun in their lives.
Most of these habits are the sorts of things that our parents were always on our cases to stop doing: “Don’t play with your food,” “please put that ridiculous toy away,” “that’s not what markers are made for” — you know what I mean. But while yes, there’s a time and a place for all of them, I still think that most people could benefit from things like playing with their food a little more. As long as you’re not, y’know, having tea with the Queen or whatever, odds are you can get away with making something unusual out of your mashed potatoes every now and again. For that matter, who knows? Maybe the Queen is actually a champion mashed potato sculptor herself. (I mean, she’s probably not, but she could be.) My point is that there’s not much point in being a grownup if you can’t be a kid every now and again — and there’s not much point in being a kid if you can’t be a kid, either.
I freely admit to having most of these weird ‘90s habits during my childhood years. I wear them with a badge of pride. Because, gosh darn it, my scrunchie collection was ace.
1. Squashing Your Fruit Roll-Up Into A Giant Ball Of Stickiness
I mean, sure, we could just eat each individual shape as we peeled it off of that static-y wrapper thing… or, we could peel off those shapes, squish them up, wrap the next shape around it, and so on, until we had something we could both eat and play catch with. Because why the heck not?
2. Obsessively Coating Your Mouth With Lip Smackers
Or Naturistics, or whatever your balm or gloss of choice was. Today, most of us do that with EOS. Old habits die hard.
3. Taking Your Tamagotchi With You Wherever You Went
The list of “Places It’s Appropriate to Bring Your Tamagotchi” bore no resemblance to the list of “Places We Actually Brought Our Tamagotchis.”
4. Stockpiling Beanie Babies Like The Apocalypse Was Coming
Seriously. You’d have thought that, if the banks collapsed, Beanie Babies would be the only currency that mattered.
5. Huffing Your Favorite Mr. Sketch Marker
If you ever saw a kid with a splash of marker right beneath their nose, you knew exactly what they’d been up to recently.
6. Humming Along With Your Dial-Up Modem
I’m still convinced that the number one hit song of the ‘90s wasn’t “Baby (One More Time)” or “Wannabe” — it was the dulcet tones of your trusty dial-up modem.
7. Stashing A Million Scrunchies On Your Wrist
Well, not literally a million, but probably more scrunchies than any single person really needed. I’m honestly not sure if they were a matter of practicality or a fashion statement; maybe it was both? Who knows. Certainly not my 8-year-old self.
8. Folding Your Notes Into Complicated Origami Shapes
We didn’t just pass notes in the ‘90s. We passed pieces of art.
9. TyPiNg LiKe ThIs OnLiNe
Why? No idea. Maybe we thought it looked ~*edgy*~. These days, we do things like surrounding words with ~**~ to make them look ~*edgy*~.
10. Collecting Weird Things
Really weird things. Like the caps from a type of juice most of us couldn’t even get where we lived.
11. Crushing On Animated Characters
To be fair, I’m pretty sure kids still crush on animated characters today; heck, sometimes even some adults crush on animated characters. (Donatello 4-eva, is what I’m saying.)
12. Developing A Nonsensical Vocabulary
“All that and a bag of chips?” I mean, chips are pretty great, but isn’t that setting the bar kind of low for how awesome something is? Then again, it’s not like “bae” is really much better, so eh. Whatever. It’s funny how often slang and gibberish overlap, isn’t it?
13. Layering Your Scrunch Socks
Does anyone else think this wacky fashion trend made your ankles look like multiple-scoop ice cream cones?
Images: Andrey Kiselev/Fotolia; Giphy (9)
