Memory travel is the greatest, especially when reaching back two decades — an intoxicating and romanticized ride through the hilly hills of our past. The travel is even better when sitting pretty upon the cushion of technological elitism. But for now, let’s get our insides glowing with warmth and go back, back, back into time.
Do you remember jamming to one-minute clips of pop songs on your low-fidelity HitClips? Writing with Gelly Roll pens, accidentally killing off your Tamagotchi (or Nano or Giga Pet) at recess, slapping your arms with bracelets, trading Pokémon cards (“Gotta catch ’em all, gotta catch ’em all!”) or thinking Nintendo 64 was it? Do you have a large box of Beanie Babies sitting in the very back of your parents’ closet and miss living vicariously through the cast of “Recess” and “Rocket Power”?
Congratulations, you’re an American ’90s kid.
I’m not sure about the rest of you lucky enough to pop out of the womb after 1988 and before 1993, but I held onto my HitClips. In the fourth grade, the Tiger Electronics product of the millennium (promoted by classy establishments like Radio Disney and Lunchables) was hanging and jangling from my JanSport with pride. They sit collecting dust in my second desk drawer at home, with a bunch of photos and old homework assignments, but they are far from trashed and forgotten.
To find them, I did have to call my mommy dearest and ask her to go on a desk hunt with me. And the clips were waiting in place just like I remembered. The names of *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys resurfaced multiple times, as well as Pink, Dream, M2M and a song I’d be happy to never hear again: Baha Men’s “Who Let The Dogs Out.”
It isn’t just me holding onto these objects of ancient (janky) technology. There are a lot of people out there still loving on that brief social musical experience. To celebrate our treasured childhood era, upward of 70 Facebook groups exist, my favorite being “When I was your age, we had Hit Clips — not iPods …” Yes, it’s both pompous and judgmental.
Clearly, life has improved since then — that is, if you are in favor of speedy communication and advanced accessibility of information. FaceTime and Spotify come to mind. Who wants to listen to one minute of a song in shitty quality anymore? There’s no place for it, expect in the hearts of ’90s kids.
All I’m trying to say is, I want to have my cake and eat it, too. I’m happy to have the best of both worlds: the capabilities of instantaneously Skyping my sister in Paris and rolling in the memory of HitClips and borderline-wholesome cartoons.
But I suspect that’s how every generation feels — caught between two worlds, a love-hate relationship with its time. And I think that’s kind of wonderful. We can watch movies while we fly and still cherish our Beanie Babies (not the miniature kind sold in McDonald’s kid packs). Yup, I love my generation limbo.