Welcome back to another episode of Drive With Us! This week’s topic is about a time period that both of us hold near and dear to our hearts… the 90s! Because we both are proud 90’s kids, what better way to reminisce about our childhood than to talk about all the cool things that made the 90’s unique and amazing?
First off… 90’s shows. There is hands down nothing better than the shows of the 90s (and early 2000s). I may be a little biased, but… I have yet to find kids shows that beat the ones we used to watch. I’m talking about CatDog, Hey Arnold, the Wild Thornberrys, Kim Possible, Danny Phantom… I could go on and on. And I can sing a bunch of the theme songs (or at least what I thought it said). There were some songs that I could never quite guess the lyrics to… like CatDog or Rolie Polie Olie (anybody ever understand them?). My failsafe was just to go either “da-doo-da-doo-da-doo CatDog” or “He’s Rolie Polie Olie, he’s small and smart and round. And dun-nun-nun-nun-nun-nun he’s the swellest kid around.” You would think that after years of watching those shows I would have gotten it… you thunk wrong. (I mean, for the longest time, I thought a certain line in the Hindi song Soni De Nakhre from Partner was “Paapi jeb” (literal translation: kiss pocket) instead of “pump up the jam” (That made for a very strange song…).
This was a time where you could practically watch any show on television because they were all that good. I have watched shows that our younger brother used to watch and couldn’t seem to get into more than half of them. If you have seen any of the 90s/early 2000s shows, then you have to agree that they were perhaps one of the greatest things to come out of that time period (at least for kids 🙂 ).
The kids of our generation…yep, I said it. I am know one of those people who say, “when I was your age…”. When us 90s kids were, well kids, we had a very different understanding of the words “fun” and “entertainment.” I’m not sure if this was just a thing that us two Indian kids did, but we would pretend to be on the game shows we watched, particularly Legends of the Hidden Temple (what an amazing show!). For those of you who have not seen this show that was a huge part of our childhood experience, look up the intro on YouTube.
We would use pillows (much to the dismay of our mom) and any other furniture at our disposal to create obstacles to race through. A lot of the times you could find us playing… outdoors *gasp* (I know, who does that anymore?). Imagination was a big part of our endless games. In today’s day and age it seems that the word imagination has taken on a different meaning. While we thought make-believe games were fun today’s generation finds interest in… eating Tide Pods. I won’t go into the endless list of reasons why that would not be fun.
In comparison to the crazy high-tech gadgets that kids have at their disposal in 2019, us 90s kids seem like we lived in the stone age. Literally. Our computers were like big boulders. And instead of sleek gaming consoles and Virtual Reality headsets, we had big bulky consoles like Sega and watched videos on VHSs! It always amazes me how kids now do not even know what a VHS or a landline phone is! Equally mind blowing is the fact that we have lived through this massive transition from the rise of technology to the rising boom.
We also hit on pop culture and music of our childhood (which for us was mostly Punjabi music… with a hint of some English hits, like Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time). We discuss why certain things are named the way they are. We cover band names, such as NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys (do you know how they came up with their names?), and big companies such as eBay and Amazon. Listen to Episode 6 to find out my reasonings behind why the latter two names were picked.
So we may not have had the most traditional childhood, even in comparison to other 90s kids, but we had an interesting mash of American and Punjabi experiences. We listened to Punjabi music, but still have at least heard of some English bands/songs. We played a wide array of outdoor games… again, mostly Indian games but also American ones that we picked up along the way. We played Indian games like Gallery and that one game where you stack your fists on someones head (it is better explained… kind of :)…. in episode 6!), but have never touched a “BopIt”. I feel like I missed out on that one… is it as fun as it seems like it would be? And weren’t there 4 actions that you can do… I can only think of BopIt, pull it, and twist it.
One of the games that came pre-programmed in practically every computer, and which I failed to understand until very recently, was Minesweeper. I honestly never realized that it was a thinking game, my method had always been click random squares hoping you don’t hit a bomb. So you’re saying that the numbers mean something?
As always, we have found quizzes! Tune in to episode 6 to see which cartoons from the 90s/early 2000s we are most like and play along by taking the quizzes and letting us know what you got! The first quiz we took was the “Which Early 2000s Cartoon Are You?” on Zimbio and the second on we took was Buzzfeed’s “Which 90’s Cartoon Series Are You?”
Whether it’s games, shows, or songs the 90s was a pretty amazing time to have a childhood! Join us on Episode 6 of Drive With Us “Bringing Back the 90s” as we embark on a reminiscent journey filled with trivia, funny revelations, and some weirdness. Learn a little… laugh a lot.
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