I bet you caught ’em all

Dear Hipster:

I was born in 1994, and I keep seeing all this “’90s kids will know” stuff on my Twitter and FB feeds. Unfortunately, not a lot of it really applies to me. I always thought of myself as a ’90s kid, but I wonder if people are leading me on. Are ’90s kids people who were born in the ’90s or people who grew up in the ’90s?

— Adam, SDSU

If you were born in 1994, you probably never went apeshit for pogs. I bet you never wished you’d saved your allowance to get a Punchers the Lobster Beanie Baby. I’ll wager you never lost sleep over Clarissa totally friendzoning Sam, before the word friendzone even meant anything. Did you yearn for a Power Glove? Were you subsequently disappointed by its almost complete uselessness? My guess is no.

If you think it’s awesome that Jenny Lewis was in The Wizard, then, well, that’s actually pretty cool no matter what decade you claim as your own.

I will concede that you probably collected your share of Pokémon cards. I bet you caught ’em all on Gameboy, didn’t you?

You could have enjoyed Doug reruns or Rugrats on DVD. Even though you were too young (if you were even born) to watch those shows when they were popular, access to 1990s-era media often provides people born in the latter half of the decade with false memories of “the ’90s.”

I’ll dispel the confusion here. The truth is, “’90s kids” were born in the ’80s. They grew up in the 1990s, begged their parents for Tamagotchis, parted their bowl cuts straight down the middle, and ate Hidden Treasures cereal like it was going out of style. (It was!) They remember what it was like to buy $5 worth of gas at a time or to see their parents buy $5 worth of gas and have it actually get you somewhere.

On the downside, lots of ’90s kids waited in line to see Star Wars: the Phantom Menace. You dodged a bullet with that one, Adam.