Current Events > Attn, CE's 90s kid's, what were your experiences/life like in 1996?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I need it for research purposes. Genuinely.

Graduating college

/not a 90's kid

Life was good. I was in grade 6 and really starting to get into skateboarding and listening to bands like Nofx, Pennywise, Rancid etc.

I was in 3rd grade my dad bought a house we got a N64 for Christmas with SM64 and DKC3 with UMK3 for the SNES

everyone I knew getting that bowl haircut that was shaved underneath that made their heads look like penises

Uh I was born in december, I'd say that's a pretty huge life experience

was 5-6. i remember playing outside, going to the pizza place to play street fighter, playing diablo on ps1 at my babysitter's, the pool, going to the library. i remember school pretty well too.

edit: oh diablo came out in 1997. i had two baby sitter during that time but i wasn't sure which one i had before the other one.

The year I was 18. Spent a lot of time watching wrestling on Monday nights. Was working full time as well.

Summer before I started middle school. My siblings was starting college in the fall. So I became the only kid in the house.

I was playing youth league baseball as a third basemen that summer. I remember thr game I lost my job lol. I wasn't paying attention and nearly took a line drive to thr face.

I joined the middle school football team as a ball boy towards the end of summer. That was fun.

It was the first summer I was really allowed to run around my small town somewhat unsupervised for longer stretches. So I did a lot of bike riding with my friends.

I remember getting Super Mario RPG that summer and getting super stuck in the pirate ship. I played throw the game with a friend though and we eventually beat it.

One stand out memory was driving my siblings to college. I was in a car with my mother. Father and siblings each took their own cars to maximize hauling capacity. My mom used the opportunity to give me my first serious birds and bees chat. It remember feeling so conflicted because I wanted to know but I also hated the feeling of growing up and loss off real childhood that went with the chat.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much of a response. These are very insightful!

bigtiggie23 posted...

The year I was 18. Spent a lot of time watching wrestling on Monday nights. Was working full time as well.

Something about you I want to know more about. Probably because you were 18 at the time.

Kitt posted...

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much of a response. These are very insightful!

Something about you I want to know more about. Probably because you were 18 at the time.

Ok?

beanie babies or something probably
lots of star wars

7, it was my first year in a new school and didn't adjust well... I remember it being a long year...I recall the 96 election but only election day... just played a lot of SNES...

I distinctly remember LSD. Lots of LSD. Oh, and a whole bunch of Phish shows. But not much else.

YourBestFrenemy posted...

I distinctly remember LSD. Lots of LSD. Oh, and a whole bunch of Phish shows. But not much else.

What was the LSD for?

Kitt posted...

What was the LSD for?

Side effects may include pretty colors, giant unicorns, and laughing for 10-13 hours straight. Drugs are good, (I mean bad, definitely bad).

Watchin Beast Wars

I was 8, and that was the year that time seemed to speed up. That year, and every year since, seemed to fly by.

Hmm So that wouldve been early high school. I was probably trying desperately to get laid and failing miserably, amongst other embarrassing shit.

Im good not revisiting that year.

CE_gonna_CE posted...

Hmm So that wouldve been early high school. I was probably trying desperately to get laid and failing miserably, amongst other embarrassing shit.

Im good not revisiting that year.

Did you at least get laid?

Kitt posted...

Did you at least get laid?

Pretty sure that was 97.

Fun times, but in hindsight maybe hooking up with a chick who had a kid was not the wisest thing to do when I was that young.

Mother fucker i hit em up

I remember getting Pokmon Blue for my birthday

I was outside damn near all the time I wasn't in school

12 years old just ended sixth grade for the summer

I was in 3rd and 4th grade which was kind of a transition since K-3 were the little kids at my school and 4-6 were the big kids. There was no more morning recess for big kids and we went to a different playground on the other side of the school.

We had a 166 MHz Pentium 1 PC with a 1 GB(!) HDD. It came with a big pack of software though there were some rad games like Magic Carpet in there. I also remember playing Mechwarrior 2 and Space Bucks that year.

We also had a SNES but it was getting long in the tooth. Super Mario RPG was a fun game that year though. We also got a N64 for Christmas.

Nickelodeon was pretty big at that time and my favorite channel to watch when Id get home from school (Nick in the Afternoon with Stick Stickly)

Also played little league baseball in the summer, but I wasnt very good at it.

https://youtu.be/oosbzq5rOhk

It was a bad summer by childhood standards as my mom wanted to move me and my brother with her to South Carolina and my dad didn't take us to Darien Lake that year as he spent the money purchasing the pool from the landlord but we did to to the NYS fair. The rest of the year was pretty cool and Thanksgiving 1996 was one of the happiest of my childhood as it was the final one my parents spent together with us kids and I didn't have to go to my grandmother's and deal with my extended family.

I probably had this really cool haircut that

MistyKnight posted...

everyone I knew getting that bowl haircut that was shaved underneath that made their heads look like penises

oh.

I was an awkward junior in high school who hasnt found my stride yet

Pretty awesome. I think I was out of school by that point, even though I was in the 5th grade. I thought I had it pretty good to be 11-years-old and getting to play video games and watch TV all day, but I didnt know at the time how much that would fuck me up in the long run.

DD_Divine posted...

I was an awkward junior in high school who hasnt found my stride yet

@DD_Divine
Feel free to decline, but do you feel comfortable expanding on that?

@Hayame_Zero

Pretty awesome. I think I was out of school by that point, even though I was in the 5th grade. I thought I had it pretty good to be 11-years-old and getting to play video games and watch TV all day, but I didnt know at the time how much that would fuck me up in the long run.

Are you saying you finished high school at 11? Damn, son, that's pimp as shit. You gotta tell what that was like (aside from the video games and TV part).

My own childhood wasn't great, but life in general was better. There was no social media, so I wasn't worried about what the Joneses were doing and being given the impression their life is incredible rather than carefully curated, I wasn't being flooded with "you've been doing x wrong your entire life" and "you are literally nothing in the scheme of the whole universe"

Just the last 20 years have just been beat down after beat down in general. Social media made it far worse.

I was 2 in 96, my memories only go back to 97 (princess diana death and star wars a new hope re-release)

TehLizardKing posted...

I was 2 in 96

Same tbh

YourBestFrenemy posted...

I distinctly remember LSD. Lots of LSD. Oh, and a whole bunch of Phish shows. But not much else.

nice

i'm jealous

I also graduated high school and turned 18 in 1996.

I worked part time in a grocery store, a job that I hated. Maybe the worst thing was that we had no finish time. The schedule said what time we started, and we went home when the boss decided we could. I remember coming in at 7 AM one Saturday when the store was super busy and being there until after 6 PM.

I also had a big crush on a girl. I put off asking her until right before the prom, and totally fucked things up and made myself look like a creep too. She was also really shitty to me too I think, but whatever. That's behind me now.

I considered going to the prom alone and just hanging out with my friends but instead opted to take the money I would have spent on the ticket, limo, tuxedo, etc. and decided to have fun with another friend who couldn't get a date and was missing the prom. We went to downtown Chicago then watched a show at Second City. Tina Fey was one of the cast members. I had a great time, actually.

High school graduation was a big deal because it was the first time I ever had both my mother's and my father's family come over at the same time. And they have pretty big families. Between all my uncles and aunts and cousins there were like 60 people there. Some friends came to meet me and they said they had a hard time finding me.

I also remember my 18th birthday. I went out with the same group of friends to a party at some really rich kid's house. I went to a prep school in the suburbs so there were a lot of them. It was the last time I saw my high school classmates outside of my circle of close friends.

action52 posted...

I also graduated high school and turned 18 in 1996.

I worked part time in a grocery store, a job that I hated. Maybe the worst thing was that we had no finish time. The schedule said what time we started, and we went home when the boss decided we could. I remember coming in at 7 AM one Saturday when the store was super busy and being there until after 6 PM.

I also had a big crush on a girl. I put off asking her until right before the prom, and totally fucked things up and made myself look like a creep too. She was also really shitty to me too I think, but whatever. That's behind me now.

I considered going to the prom alone and just hanging out with my friends but instead opted to take the money I would have spent on the ticket, limo, tuxedo, etc. and decided to have fun with another friend who couldn't get a date and was missing the prom. We went to downtown Chicago then watched a show at Second City. Tina Fey was one of the cast members. I had a great time, actually.

High school graduation was a big deal because it was the first time I ever had both my mother's and my father's family come over at the same time. And they have pretty big families. Between all my uncles and aunts and cousins there were like 60 people there. Some friends came to meet me and they said they had a hard time finding me.

I also remember my 18th birthday. I went out with the same group of friends to a party at some really rich kid's house. I went to a prep school in the suburbs so there were a lot of them. It was the last time I saw my high school classmates outside of my circle of close friends.

This was a wonderful post. Thank you!

96, stoned most of the time. I was hardly ever at school. Mom finally withdrew me, truancy would have hit her hard.

I was 11 and while I still liked kiddie stuff like Nickelodeon and such, I'm pretty sure I was already transitioning to more of a teenage mindset at this age. I know I was watching MTV a lot more (which was actually really awesome back then, not the borefest it is nowadays.) I didn't know much about music yet so I was listening to a lot of the stuff my older brother listened to. Smashing Pumpkins, Tupac, and Oasis got regular play.

Oh yeah, also the Beatles had a comeback of sorts around this time, because they released their Anthology (unreleased recordings/demos + a book and a documentary.) It was a pretty big deal from what I recall.

This was also the year I was exposed to the internet, though I didn't spend much time on it. We had dial-up and it was slow as heck, websites were few and very janky. When I did get some time on the computer, I would usually be on Worlds Chat, which was a primitive avatar type chat (the avatars were similar to the sprites in DOOM.)

One of the things I remember about it was that the OJ Simpson trial was still fresh on everyone's mind, and one of the avatars on there was of a woman that reminded me of Nicole Brown Simpson, and the avatar was just this woman's head. So I thought of it as a Nicole Simpson severed head avatar.

Here's a couple of screenshots of this program as it looked back when I was using it, where you can see this weird head avatar.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/5/1/AAC89BAAEhdz.jpg

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/5/2/AAC89BAAEhd0.jpg

Masked Rider
Brother was born

I legitimately felt like life was set to get better

The summer olympics were fun to watch. Was nice to see Donovan Bailey win the 100m dash and not get busted on doping like Ben Johnson in 1988.

Other than that the music was great and i went to Seattle for my Birthday.

I would had been 7 at the time probably watching WCW, NHL Red Wings, playing street hockey, basketball, having sleep overs at my grandparents on the weekends or a friends, and going to the local arcade or roller rink. I know at that age I was listening to whatever main stream music was on the radio and had a snes I would play now and then, but not much. I believe I watched a lot of Cartoon Network with Looney Toons and Scooby Doo. I watched some Nickelodeon, but think I didnt fully start watching it till the following year or 98. Oh MTV was great

I was big into Power Rangers for a short time. I collected pogs for a little bit too. I played with wrestling and power ranger action figures. My parents tried to get me into beanie babies, but I think my mom was into them more lol.

Over the summers we would spend like a week now and then at my grandmas trailer at a campground or go on summer trips to cedar point. I was mostly outside being a kid over all though. No one my age was really into video games. It was usually the teens that played snes.

1998 was when we got a N64 and my life started to change up a bit more with playing video games and music and tv got a lot better. I got a bike and road that a lot around the neighborhood. If I was a few years older the 90s would had been so much better, but I got to enjoy the decade towards the mid to later half of it the most.

I was a sickly kid so I actually did not go outside as much as my friends and cousins. I was just starting middle school in 1996 so yeah, that sucked pretty badly not going to lie. Middle school/7th to 8th grade/13 to 14 years old or 15 for the ones that got left back once is that time period where kids are at their most vicious/can be some ol' lunatics. I quickly met some fellow nerds so I used to bring my old phat gameboy to school with a link cable and play some gameboy killer instinct, lol. My first ever school elective was band class.....I wanted to play the drums or the sax but lul my parents ain't spending that much money so I got a clarinet......=/ lol.

My house was just getting cartoon network around this period so I spent my TV time watching the usual popular stuff of the time. Used to watch sitcoms and shows like fresh prince, family matters, living single (it came on after wrastlin' so why not right), martin, in living color, kenan and kel, salute your shorts, married with children, all the good stuff really. Cartoons is the stuff damn near every show kids in the 90s in murica' was watching.

My favorite of all though.......WWF raw is war (well this one is more 1997). God damn did I love me some wrestling in this era, lol. I was there right when they transition into the attitude era so all the storylines I was there for.

Video games wise neither me nor my brother actually owned any of the 32 bit consoles yet. I was still in my nintendo fanboy stage since I grew up with nintendo products (my dad bought me a SNES like two weeks after it released in NA and my parents also just randomly bought me a gameboy one year for christmas. I didn't ask for it but god damn did I love it), so it was still all NES, SNES, gameboy, and sega genesis (my older brother got this as a present) with a sega CD my bro bought with his first job. The sega CD was....kind of eh', not going to lie. First time I played a playstation was when my cousin brought his over and we was all like "oh snap this krazy ivan, darkstalkers, and battle arena toshinden game is the shit!"

I got a nintendo 64 for christmas in 1996, but super mario 64 was selling so crazy that I couldn't even get that game until my birthday in february. The only N64 games I was playing was whatever we managed to rent from blockbuster.....mario 64 was damn near always gone so I was playing nothing but killer instinct gold and wayne gretzky's hockey for a long-ass time.

This is also 1997 but the nintendo 64's game library was so week after that initial mario 64 rush ended that this gave me a punch to my fanboy gut......all those beloved franchises I loved on our NES and my SNES like mega man, final fantasy, and street fighter is now on this playstation and sega saturn, and god do I want to play that mega man X4 so bad because god damn zero is like, playable playable and not someone you called in for awhile like in X3. I got me a playstation with final fantasy 7 for christmas in 1997. Thanks dad for real.

Oh and about how I came across as a creep to the girl I had a crush on... What the heck, I'll just say it.

She was a work friend. Mistake number one was that instead of asking for her phone number, I looked it up in the phone book. Mistake number two... in 1996, caller ID was a new thing that most people didn't have. When people called you, you still had no way of knowing who it was. But this girl recently HAD gotten caller ID and had told me about it. Well I wanted to call and ask her out, but I was still scared that she would know it was me as I called. But I learned that I could hide it by dialing star 67. Which I did... but then as it was ringing I chickened out before anyone picked up. I did this a bunch of times during the week, chickening out all the time but thinking "Well, at least I'm doing this anonymously so she doesn't know it was me." But what I didn't realize was, all those calls had appeared on her ID, but they'd appeared as "anonymous." And when I talked to her she immediately noticed and was like "Oh, those anonymous calls were from you!" because of course she noticed.

The way she was kind of shitty to me was, instead of just rejecting me she said "I'll think about it," and then would never give me a straight answer. Then, a couple of weeks later, I was counting my register when suddenly my crush and the assistant manager start talking about this guy she had met at a party last Friday, and how he was so hot, and my crush was saying how she hoped that it would go somewhere... And I remember being hurt, but more hurt that she didn't just tell me. And that she was talking like I wasn't there.

It wasn't until a year later when I thought about how weird it was for them to talk about something like that, out of the blue. Because I'd never heard them talk about stuff like that. I'd never even heard of them hanging out outside of work before. So the more I think about it, the more likely it seems that they staged the whole thing to make me leave her alone. There's at least a good chance of it, I think. Which means that she talked to the assistant manager about my embarrassing attempts to ask her out, and God knows who else.

Oh, and guess what? After that, I still asked her to go to prom with me, as a friend. Oh god, what the fuck is wrong with me?!

Ugh. Thinking about that still makes me cringe a little.

YourBestFrenemy posted...

I distinctly remember LSD. Lots of LSD. Oh, and a whole bunch of Phish shows. But not much else.

That is a good time to have been a Phish Fan.
It still is, but that was some formative years.
Are you in The North East?

I still think Chalkdust Torture might be my favorite song of theirs.

SiO4 posted...

That is a good time to have been a Phish Fan.
It still is, but that was some formative years.
Are you in The North East?

I still think Chalkdust Torture might be my favorite song of theirs.

Colorado here.
Back when I first started following them in the late 80's, the shows were small, they would play chess with the audience at each one. Very good times indeed.
You Enjoy Myself is still my fave Phish tune.