With the fall semester getting underway and many of you going out on your own for the first time, it is often comforting to look back on the simpler times in life when your toughest test required naming the 50 state capitals and a rough night out meant your ray gun malfunctioned during laser tag. Although you undoubtedly have your best and wildest years ahead of you, a little nostalgia is a fun, legal way to flash back to the glory days of JNCO jeans, yo-yos, No Fear t-shirts, and Michael Jordan making you cry every June after once again eliminating your team from the playoffs (sorry girls, I’m sure you had some great fads also, but I would be scalped for referencing Doc Martens shoes and “Clarissa Explains It All”). Perhaps the most entertaining part of reflecting on our wonder years is how everyone has different experiences to share and usually they all make you say “Yeah, I remember that!” Take a look at the three items/trends/group dance moves that helped shape my childhood and see if you can relate to my wacky younger years.
1. Spin The Bottle and Other Gratuitous Hook Up Games
I am always telling my friends how jealous I am of my younger self because I used to get crazy boy band ass in elementary school and have no idea what happened as I got older. Don’t get me wrong, nowadays my forecast still calls for a thunderstorm of boobies, but getting to the Promised Land is not nearly as easy as when I was a young lad. The only reasonable conclusion I can reach when trying to determine why I was such a playground gigolo is the prominence of awesomely naughty games for the curious, horny pre-teen.
I was a prince when it came to spin the bottle, it was as if that magical 0.9 fluid ounces of Poland Spring water had a magnet that was attracted to me and the hottest, most popular girl in the circle every time. I was fortunate enough to play by the “big kids rules” where if the bottle landed on the same couple twice, you would have to use tongues and, if it happened a third time, you got some special alone time with your bottle buddy. Nothing was more awkward then when the bottle landed on two dudes and they were forced to assert their heterosexuality with statements like “This game is gay, let’s go play football.”
From spin the bottle grew my hook up game of choice, seven minutes in heaven. This was the first true test of stamina for the male libido and boy was I game for some good old-fashioned necking when I got into that closet with some wide-eyed coed. Now I’m just lucky if I can last seven minutes between the sheets with an attractive girl (although alcohol does help), but back in the swinging 90’s I was a Peter North-like stallion.
Even if you were just getting those 420 magical seconds with your ball and chain of a girlfriend (who you probably have been going steady with for a whole 3 weeks), you would lock lips like your plane was going down over the Pacific. Some of my finest sexual conquests went down in basement and bedroom closets and I owe a whole lot to those times when hooking up was easier than Paris Hilton.
2. Starter Jackets
Anybody who grew up in the 90’s knows damn well that “subtle” was not a word in our vocabulary and the only thing louder than the music of Sir Mix-A-Lot and Cypress Hill was the fashion. Case in point: the Starter jacket. It’s one thing to support your favorite team by wearing their merchandise, it is an entirely different ballgame when you brand yourself with an enormous logo and let the entire world know of your fandom. No article of clothing was louder or more flamboyant than the Starter jacket, a grade school mainstay for our generation that made every recess photo look like a Care Bears style rainbow.
Let’s break down some of the Starter jacket’s main attributes beginning first with appearance. Not only did these bad boys look like Joseph’s famed Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat but, more often than not, the most popular Starter jackets didn’t even represent hometown teams. I remember half of the kids in my grade had either a Charlotte Hornets, Phoenix Suns, or Dallas Cowboys jacket and not one of these children could name a player on any three of these franchises. At the height of the jacket’s popularity, the Yankees were in the early years of their four-World Series championship dynasty but did I once see anybody in my New York public school wearing a Bronx Bombers Starter? Nope. Why settle for navy blue and white when you can blind your friends with neon purple and sun-bright orange?
Two of my favorite qualities of the Starter jacket were its storage capabilities and weather resistant design. The rise of Starter coincided with some other trends including the explosion of Nickelodeon Gak onto the youth scene as well as the debut of the satanically dangerous devil sticks. Us kids couldn’t get enough of this stuff so, naturally, we had to carry our stuff everywhere we went. Enter the Starter jacket with its cavernous pockets and you were equipped to carry the supplies for an impromptu game of pogs at any time regardless of location. In addition to its immense holding capacity, the Starter was a beast when it came to weathering the elements. Typical winter coats are water-resistant, but I can confidently say that Starter made their product from earthquake, volcano, and AIDS-proof material. The jacket laughed in the face of snowballs and could do more than just survive recess, this baby could make it through a nuclear holocaust.
The loud, colorful, enormous and bulletproof Starter jacket will always hold a special place in my heart and conjure fond memories for young sports fans everywhere. I shed a tear each time I button up my metrosexual pea coat and pine for the days of my bright green Jets Starter.
3. Dodgeball
Regardless of it you were the class moron or even the smelly kid of the grade, everybody got a clean slate once you stepped foot on the gymnasium hardwood. My gym teacher ruled by the terms of Hammurabi’s Code as dodgeball was the ultimate eye for an eye contest that offered a chance at redemption for one and all. Where else could you exact revenge on that kid who pantsed you in front of the girl of your dreams or go headhunting for that douche who showed you up in the spelling bee finals? Once those big red rubber balls were put into play, everybody was made equal and looks, popularity, smarts, and general hygiene were set aside for a beautiful, barbaric display of youthful sport.
Although I was a versatile dodgeballer and it’s difficult to pin a label to my style of play, I think the best term to describe my game would be “guerilla warfare.” Gym class was one of the few places where I benefited from my small stature as it was near impossible for opponents to see the 4’5” assassin with a rocket for an arm coming at them before it was too late. Unfortunately for my enemies (and I guess myself as well), my line of vision was directly aligned with their genital region and they often fell victim to a vicious ballshot that was accompanied by a one-way ticket to the nurse’s office. I could hide better than a legitimately funny joke in a Carrot Top standup routine and I can’t remember one gym class where I wasn’t the last man standing on my team, a role that I readily embraced. Looking back now, dodgeball is where I developed the “me against the world” mentality that characterized much of my youth because once I was backed into a corner with a dozen balls being hurled at my face, I didn’t just lay back and take it like Elton John in a bathhouse. No, I snapped into G.I. Joe commando mode and either went down in a glorious hail of gunfire or defied the odds and took out the competition one by one until victory was mine.
Short of banging out Miss Universe or quarterbacking a team to a Super Bowl victory, I can’t imagine a more satisfying conquest than single-handedly winning a dodgeball game. In my elementary school we only had gym class once a week, so if you were the dodgeball MVP then you were certain to be treated like a superhero and could do no wrong in class for the next seven days. 2 + 2 = 5? Sure, that math is correct if the dodgeball king says so… he (or she) could defy the laws of arithmetic. I look back on my golden years in the grade school gym and smile knowing that those weekly athletic triumphs laid the foundation for my life as a future Socialite.
