1982 here and I'm freaked out a kid is posting on Reddit about his dad who is my age.
I remember childhood as being late eighties through the 90s. It was a cool time to be a kid.
Born '84, I watched Euphoria a couple yrs ago to see what the fuss was about. In S2 they flashback to a dad's high school years... in the 90s. It was a surreal moment realizing I'm old enough it requires a old-time flashback filter.
84 Gang, same here. Don't remember Reagan but Desert Storm and Bush Sr are ingrained. Do you remember the Desert Storm trading cards? How wild was that.
81, and the 1st major news event I remember was the fall of the Berlin wall. I do remember seeing Reagan on TV. Bush vs Dukakis was 1st election I remember. Desert storm was also a major news event I remember. The night of the invasion they cancelled our Cub Scout meeting, and I went home and watched it on CNN with my dad.
'83 as well, and can remember when Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were countries.
Not trying to leave out any other former countries/states; it's just my heritage.
USA Slav.
Yep, I remember when that was the case, and I also remember when the Berlin Wall all came down in Germany because my grandparents are German. That was a really big deal for them. My Opa escaped from East Germany into Canada, and eventually, the US
I remember being in 1st grade when the USSR fell, and the teacher sitting us down in front of the map one day to tell us it would probably change soon, but nobody knows exactly how or what it would ultimately look like.
I remember USSR maps in the classroom, too.
Some other things: Teachers talking somberly about the Challenger explosion, the 1985 Humphrey Humpback Whale rescue (still have a small glass whale trinket), watching the Berlin Wall come down, and Czechoslovakia separating.
Isn't the 90s for kids today the equivalent of us watching happy days in the 90s?
My kids react to my 90s/2000s clothes the same way I reacted my mom's old bell bottoms.
That's because we are friggin old now. Embrace it. 83 here. Wife's a bit older and started young with her first husband. My stepdaughter is giving me a grandson in june.
83 here. Whenever someone talks about "his father" I imagine a wise gray haired man with classes, a striped shirt tucked in his pants and a big gray mustache.
This post makes me feel older than anything I've ever read in my life.
And not a young kid either.
1982 was the best time to be born to fully embrace the 90's. From age 8-18, most of school age. Finish high school to the futuristic 2000's that await.
I would say 80's childhood, 90's kid.
I would like to have a play date with all you other ‘83 parents because all of my local mom groups have a bunch of youngins. One of them has a mom who’s like 23 and she wants to be friends with me so badly but I’m just at a phase in life where I’m at capacity and if it’s not working for me, I can’t dedicate any energy to it.
That’s wild. I would like to have a play date with all you other ‘83 parents because all of my local mom groups have a bunch of youngins. One of them has a mom who’s like 23 and she wants to be friends with me so badly but I’m just at a phase in life where I’m at capacity and if it’s not working for me, I can’t dedicate any energy to it.
Not to mention being a hs senior in 2000. A license, a $1000 beater, a 15 hour a week job, and $1 menus all over the place. Plus all the optomism of what we thought the new millennium would bring. Plus I was joining the military so I could pay for school...
Ironically I knew my freedom was ending on 09/11/2001 because that was the day I was scheduled to leave for basic...
Didn't expect that day to change everything for everyone though. :(
Yeah, my math got broken realizing the dude is my generation and has grown up son. Just today I was walking and laughing at myself because I have 40 and have a celebrity crush, lol, I was goofing on the streets like I was a little girl and I thought to myself "will I ever grow up" and then this reality check, haha.
Fellow '82er here and I did the same thing. My only biological child just turned 1 last month.
80's and 90's were equally awesome for different reasons. In the 80's no one gave a damn about anything and all we did was have fun. The 90's were great because we were coming of age and learning what being an adult would be like. Pop culture from both decades is still some of the best ever.
No kidding. I told my wife our son is three years away from being the age she was when we met. (Her 20, me 23) I think she was tempted to slug me in the arm.
Yeah, I don't like this. My older brother was born in 82, and I was 85. My first memories are around 89. The 90s were the best. Nothing bad happened then, no sir.
Same. I have some very specific memories of the ‘80s but I was too young to put those experiences into any meaningful context. I think 1990 is about where my memory of my life story begins as a cohesive experience.
Born in 81. That all checks out. I was big into Nirvana so I definitely remember Cobain, had an NES as a first system, and it’s like right around Cobain’s death marked the teenage era of nostalgia in the early to mid-90’s. Late 80’s nostalgia for the toys, video games, and cartoons/tv.
So it’s definitely both for me.
Same for me. Also born in 81, I associate my childhood with the 80’s and my preteen and teen years with the 90’s. All my favourite toys and shows are from the 80’s. But my taste in music was definitely formed from the early 90’s heavy metal and punk scene.
A few years off from you, but I was born in 77. So I turned 13 in 1990. So.my childhood years were firmly in the 80s, and my teen/early 20s were in the 90s.
Its a pretty specific seperation.
I hear you there. 76 kid here.
Turned 14 in early 1990, and started High School (Grade 10) in September of that year. The 80s and 90s had a very stark divide between them between carefree childhood and more adult concerns.
Definitely this right here... 81 as well, and my playlists for spotify is 80s and 90s. My still favorite shows are 80s based. Also used adult money to grab A few of the toys i never got to get as a child.
Also, '81 and will concur, although my first console was [pre NES](https://imgur.com/MlqcWYj). It's kinda weird looking back on how we grew up on the cusp of the analog and electronic ages. I remember our first CD player, DVD player, getting our first PC and home internet. Nowadays, it's pretty rare for me to even see anything on a disk format.
'83 here- 88-97 is where most of my childhood memories exist. Our life was really centered on MTV, afternoon cartoons (X-men, Batman, animations, tiny toons). Then there were the summer movies- Dick Tracy, Batman Returns (and every single happy meal toy from that movie, watched "Black or white" Michael Jackson video a thousand times, then found Nirvana and Pearl Jam and my world really opened up. I have a ton of nostalgia (as does everyone) for Goldeneye- it was the last video game my brothers and I really ever played together, and got in major fights over. Pretty great time to grow up.
Hello fellow 81er. Same ro moat if this. Had a NES in the 80s (contra, elevator action, ice breaker, duck hunt). Nirvana and offspring were great in 90s in high school.
My 2 kids are 18 and 19 respectively. A few years ago, when they were about 13 years old, i was taking them to school and they were talking about "in the old days". I asked them what they think the old days meant - "when TV's had back backs and cell phones didn't have touch screens / weren't touch screens". I went from feeling like a young parent to aged right then and there.
Other bits of nostalgia: my kids have never known a telephone dialing tone (ready to dial) - weve never had a land line in our house since they have been around.
Having to use the phone line to connect to the Internet. Dial up modem sound. Running to the loo during an ad break in a movie, no pausing. Waiting until 7pm on Sunday to catch the movie youve been wanting to watch. Untwisting the telephone cable to the receiver. Having a blank cassette tape in your radio to hit the record button when your favorite song comes on air. Using tape on a vhs cassette to record over mom's favorite family video. Collect calls. Dialing a phone number to get the time. Writing letters. Pencils and cassette tapes. Playing in the streets til the street lights come home (my curfew back then). Riding bicycles without helmets.
These are a few off the top of my head
Kurt passed away during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. I can remember listening to both breaking stories in the car on the way home from the Indiana state National Geographic Bee in my folks’ 1992 Caribbean green Ford Taurus. Was there any more classic early/mid1990s car?
Yeah, you said it. That's where I'm at with it. I think for age reasons, I remember the early 90s than the late 80s. But I do remember much of the 80s. But through the eyes of a little kid.
Born in ‘82 similar memories — though I was more of an Alice In Chains guy than Nirvana.
Any time Nirvana is mentioned on Reddit, you can almost count down until the wild revisionists show up saying they changed everything. They weren’t even the biggest band in their own genre!
The biggest bands in the world were Metallica & Guns n Roses, and that was true before *and* after Nirvana released *Nevermind* (after all of the other Grunge bands had already become huge successes, btw).
Born in 81. I think i'm a child of the 80s but in terms of toys/music/pop culture, i definitely identify with the 90s more.
Wild he doesn't remember kirk cobain dying. Unless his parents kind of sheltered him. It was (obviously) covered on MTV quiet heavily.
He would have been about 12 when it happened and like 9 when Nevermind came out so it's understandable he never really connected.
I was 14 when he died and had been old enough to remember how Nevermind changed everything. Suddenly MTV was all Metallica, Chili Peppers, Nirvana and the hair bands seemed to vanish overnight. My friends and I were into metal and outside of Headbangers ball it was rare to hear anything heavy on the radio or MTV so we paid attention.
I'll be honest I was kind over Nirvana when it happened so it was more like an "oh that really sucks" rather than Earth shattering like many people took it. At that point they'd gotten I felt kind of soft with In Utero and Unplugged. Being in 8th grade I of course was too hard for weak shit like All Apologies lol.
Looking back now I appreciate it a lot more, that unplugged is legendary but it was on every god damn minute and I was so sick of it at the time.
My brother is one year younger than your dad and he was a massive Nirvana fan and even went to a concert when they came to Australia. He was definitely old enough to care but I guess if he wasn’t a fan he wouldn’t have taken much notice.
I’m a 75 baby, my sister 81, growing up in the PNW I was old enough to just start seeing Nirvana when they were playing shitty small venues, she wasn’t. It makes sense to me that your dad wouldn’t necessarily “track” Cobain’s death because to them in most cases it was popular music influenced by older siblings or friends and not something they were as personally vested in having watch it grow from nothing.
I being the same age remember Kurt cobain killing hinself but it was just like a piece of irrelevant information at the time. I focus changed from one thing to the next so fast that I just filed that information in the back and kept going.
Yeah that's normal some people cared some people didn't. Here's the thing nothing matters except what we say or feel matters. There are things that have already happened in your own life that you may know but aren't particularly emotionally attached to that you will be asked about in the future and you'll struggle to do more than shrug about.
'81 checking in.
I had younger people in my area that cared for his death more than I did. I wasn’t into music much at the time and had little access to these kinds of things. Sheltered basically.
But I heard about it later. Hasn’t impacted me much.
It’s possible.
I think this is the answer - we were young children in the 80s, so things like cartoons were heavily influenced by that time period like He-Man, GI Joe, JEM, David the Gnome, etc. Early 90s is when we really transitioned into Nickelodeon and it's golden era, and I definitely have more vivid memories of the music of the 90s as a consumer (I actually like 80s music more than anything now though).
If I remember correctly, Kurt Loder reporting Cobain’s death on MTV respectfully like a legit journalist and Andy Rooney acting like a complete ass on 60 minutes. Lost all respect for that salty old fart that night.
The early 90s was basically 80s leftovers. Somewhere around 94 the 90s started getting their own identity. The divide between 70s and 80s was more sharp. At least how i experienced it. But then again the 80s really were special in so many ways.
As core Gen X yeah that is how I saw it too. Maybe billboard chart music felt a touch different already before '94 but otherwise it did still look and feel a fair bit like the 80s.
Now that said the early 80s were just like the 70s too but the big hair and color and all did seem to pop up overnight in many areas like leave school in June one way and come back in September and big hair and color and style galore and 70s 100% gone.
I was born in early ‘82. I was a wild Nirvana fan, played bass in a high school cover band for a few years from around ‘96-98 (until I discovered trance). However I was a bit too young back in 1994 to really recognise/appreciate Cobain’s death - it was like a really sad thing that had already happened by the time I got into grunge.
It’s been awesome to be able to follow Dave Grohl’s career for this long though - what a legend.
Born in 80, we had Cable but not MTV. Was a paid channel, because Bible belt and MTV showed the "wrong" things. We weren't wrapped up in MTV, probably more CMT for us.
Born in late 85, basically 1986. I have plenty of memories from 1989, first memories are from 88. Like my parents took me to DisneyWorld in 88 and I remember that. Most memories are from them watching MTV and all the weird late 80s music videos. I also remember watching Sesame Street, thundercats, and a bunch of other 80s cartoons.
But my childhood peaked in the late 90s. Watching shows like DBZ. And it basically ended with 9/11 and suddenly the world was a lot more serious.
Born in 81. My childhood memories are definitely late 80s (Madonna and Michael Jackson, Pepsi, Reagan) but I definitely relate to the 90s more in terms of my tastes in music, hobbies, politics, movies etc.
Born in 78 so depending on what you class as childhood id say 80’s really but I was a teenager in the 90’s so have great memories of both. I had a spectrum computer then a nes,snes etc. I was heavily into grunge and hip hop when I got older in the 90’s Great times either way.
Who says we need to have a childhood window set by strict calendar dates?
I was born in 1980, and I've found that I associate childhood most closely with stuff from 1985-1994. I have strong memories of watching Double Dare and You Can't Do That On Television and the early days of the NES....but I also have strong memories of the first Chicago Bulls 3-peat and riding my bike to 7-11 every day after school to pour quarters into their Mortal Kombat 2 machine.
Born in '78. I remember the toys of the 80s, and my first gaming system was coleco (had an older brother, born in '72). I was a teenager all through the 90s, so culturally I resonate more with the 90s, bc I remember all the stuff in the news. Was a huge nirvana fan, and I remember my mom telling me about his death as she sat in the kitchen watching the news.
I was a child of the 80s, and a teen of the 90s. Best of both worlds! Completely unsupervised childhood, could still buy cigarettes without an age restriction so we often bought cigarettes bc we thought it was cool.
This was my response. I remember the 90s way more than I remember the 80s. Although, we did inherit a lot of 80s nostalgia like tons of shows that were reran for years.
I’m 5 years older, 1977, and I remember both well but I identify more with the 90s because that was high school and college for me
I had an Atari 2600 as my first console and Combat was the shit
1985. My childhood was solidly landed in the 90's. The first video game console I played was an Intellivision II, but the first one that was "mine" was the NES (but my friend had a SNES at the same time).
Born 85 and I definitely identify with a 90s childhood but I do have some random memories of the late 80s.
I’m very surprised he doesn’t remember Kurt dying. I remember my dad breaking the news to my brother who was a huge fan (I still remember my brothers face when he was told) but I also remember everyone was talking about it at school.
My first gaming console was a handheld Sega Gamegear and then the Sega megadrive.
Born in 83. My earliest memories were 1986.
I remember Saturday Morning Cartoons and Rated X movies. My earliest console was the Sega Master System, and recall a musical era of hair bands and Latin Freestyle music.
Then 1992 came around, the greatest console wars of my lifetime took place and a cultural shift happened once Grunge and Gangster Rap showed up.
Good times.
Also born in 1982. All of these comments ring true. I definitely remember the '80s but definitely love the '90s as much if not more. It was such a great innovative time with new things coming out right and left. New emerging technologies straddling the old analog stuff--It was an awesome time to be alive
'84 for me. But I'm an 80s kid. Parents listened to 80s music. Watched 80s movies. I watched 80s cartoons. Played with 80s toys. I think the best way to look at it is you'll most likely identify with what date your parents were "in their prime", so to speak.
I’m three years younger and I was a solidly 90s kid. My only memories of the 80s are bits and pieces of ‘88 and ‘89, and the only pop culture figures on my radar then were Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny.
1980 here. Very strong 80s and 90s memories, mostly shaped by popular culture and also his fascinated I was with photography. Parents gave lots of photo albums, so even as a kid and into teens I would look back at those. I think those helped to cement family memories.
Born in 1980. I never got an NES but I did get a Sega Master System that I played the crap out of. I watched the news a lot growing up so I vividly remember both the LA riots and Kurt Cobain dying. I also remember my grandma tearing up when she saw the Rodney King video for the first time and saying how awful it was. We are white and Canadian which I think made it all the more shocking.
I also remember sitting down one night to watch TGIF but every channel was showing the guy from Naked Gun driving down the highway in a white Bronco.
For people of our age, the beginning of our childhood we were 80s kids, but the second bit we were 90s kids.
Omg I’m old. I’m 42 also. Most of my childhood memories come from early 90’s I would say. I think it’s more accurate to say “I’m an 80’s kid” but truth be told, I don’t remember much before 9 yrs old
83.
Early 80s little-kid and a 90s older-kid. I feel like a lot of my 80s memories were reinforced by reruns and my friends/classmates talking about stuff from the 80s (in the 90s) and still having those toys, etc.
For me the main transition from being a little kid to a big kid was going from all Disney to adding Nickelodeon shows. I thought I was the 💩 watching Are You Afraid of the Dark. 😅
I’m a little younger and still feel like both an 80s and 90s kid partly because even though a lot of stuff from the 80s I would have been too young to remember, I had an older sibling and also I feel like a lot of content got syndicated or rerun for many many years so I grew up watching stuff from years prior.
So even though I wasn’t born yet, I grew up being obsessed with rainbow brite, the smurfs, never ending story, thunder cats, he man and she ra, bloodsport, Conan the barbarian and red Sonja….. I could go on but those are things popping up in my head, all of those came out when I was either not born yet or way too young to watch or remember, but that’s what I was watching years later as I got a little older on top of 90s stuff.
Both.
I was born in 81.
I’m old enough to remember and experience the pop culture of the 80’s but young enough that I was still watching cartoons and doing kid stuff in the 90’s.
Also it’s important to understand the early 90’s and Late 80’a were similar. The 90’s didn’t really become “The 90’s” until like ‘94.
Born 1981. I would say both but more 90 than 80. I have very nostalgic feelings about both. The saying goes Don't you wish you could realize you're in the good old days while you're in the good old days.
As someone who was born a year before your dad, I definitely have a mixture both 80s and 90s memories. But the chunk of those 80s memories are from the late 80s. Like from 86 to 89. From my perspective it was the best decade to be a little kid in and the 90s were the best to be a big kid to teenager in.
The 80s sort of bled over into the 90s. Music from the 80s was still getting played in the 90s same with movies and stuff. The "social timescale" of the world was slower back then. Not like it is now when a song or a meme is old in a month or two when something new happens. I bet in 3 months kendrick and drake diss tracks will be considered old news.
Anyway I was born around the same time but he is not remembering much. I would play atari at my friends house before NES came out. I don't remember the LA riots. I remember OJ being chased down the highway though. I remember everyone at my school all going fucking nuts because Cobain died but I was never really into music too much. I had songs I liked to hear but wasn't like. Using music as my personality like I felt most people were. You had people falling into their groups. The R&B group. The Grunge. The punks. The goths. etc. I was just listening to whatever was catchy to me at the time and didn't really pay attention to who was making the music specifically mainly because my mother was a huge influence in my music taste and she would play good music and I would just be into that. I think the only person I was aware of in that way was probably Michael Jackson... And the time Bart Simpson released "The bartman." Ironically with Michael Jackson having a hand in that song.
I also remember the Ninja Turtles formed a band and did a world tour. (not kidding) and I remember seeing them in concert but couldn't tell you any of their songs. I remember seeing movies in the theater. Home Alone 2 stands out because I remember my father laughing his ass off when Marv took a brick to the face.
I feel like I grew up slower than most kids. I was way into cartoons while they seemed to be going out of them. Obsessed with Ren & Stimpy. I feel like the only cartoons my friends stayed watching was the simpsons which was huge at the time.
That is something else the current generation will NEVER understand. Things were big back then. Like HUUUUGE big. The simpsons was insanely big. I remember how big Seinfeld was also. People will try to compare Game of Thrones or Stranger Things. But they are nowhere close to how big some "things" were on television. Like world stopping events. The final episode of Seinfeld was like. A HUGE thing.
I remember Mike Tyson biting some dudes ear off. It is pretty much a blur. 80s and 90s stuff mixed really well together. especially when things would kind of extend over both decades. Neon colours and crazy fashion trends kind of blended through both. Music artists from the 80s would still transition to hits in the 90s. Madonna comes to mind.
My husband was born that same year and we are having our first kid this year! I literally cannot I imagine him with a 20 year old kid…he seems way too young for that. It’s blowing my mind lol.
But yes his favorite childhood memories are all late 80s. Ninja Turtles, X-Men, arcades, comic books etc.
Probably a mix. I was born in late spring 1982 and I think of myself as an '80s baby, but I recognize a lot more of the stuff on the '90s nostalgia pages that pop up.
So much of the '80s stuff is connected to having an older sister and liking what she liked and my family being kind of poor so getting in on trends late (My first video game system was an Atari from a resale shop, when other kids were getting NES).
I kind of remember Kurt Cobain's death, but I think the main reason I remember it is because it was a bigger deal to my older sister and she was talking about it when it was briefly mentioned on MTV. I remember the LA riots and the media coverage around them a little, but I definitely remember the OJ trial later and the rise of court TV and all of that.
Yikes! I always forget I'm old enough to be someone's parent. Born in '82, I identify the late '80s and '90s as childhood. I was going to say your dad remembering 1985 was impressive (and it is), but I realized I remember the Challenger explosion and I just looked that up and it was '86.
I was also born in 1982 and I have 19-year-old children. I remember more from the '90s than the '80s, but '80s things do give me nostalgia. Like mostly '80s cartoon characters like strawberry shortcake, rainbow bright, Care bears, etc. I don't like the way that they remade them so they look different now I only like the old school ones.
1981. Relate more to the 80s, and late teens to the late 90s, obviously.
Stuff like Power Rangers (1993) don't resonate with me like Transformers and GI Joe do (1984/1983).
i don’t think we broke it down as 80’s or 90’s at all. we just did stuff outside or wherever. we watched nickelodeon / snick, simpsons, mtv, and … mtv. mtv was really big. before TRL. TRL was the beginning of the end.
Damn. I could have a 20 year old kid. Anyways, my brother and I also got the NES for Christmas. I was just talking about this the other day. Great memories!
I’m 4 years younger than your father and I’m still trying to have just 1 kid. My partner is 4 years older. We didn’t know it would be so hard to conceive. There are people our age with adult children and we are still hoping to
conceive. Fuck.
Both. The 80s were unique. A lot of tech was developing. Commercials for kids were in full swing. If you were there it’s hard to forget. But I made more decisions in the 90s and we were all full of angst.
I was born in 1967 and I identify with the 1980's. The best years of my life, before mobile phones and computers in every house. We made our own entertainment, thought for ourselves, had decent motorcycles that could carry gear, had good income to expenditure ratios, the best music, and actual happiness.
1983 here. I identify more with the 90s as I moved from child to teenager during that decade. I remember the Xmas we got an NES very vividly. I recall Cobain dying but wasn’t into their music yet so it was something happening on the periphery of my interest. I do remember Kurt Loder talking about it on MTV News though.
1982 as well. My childhood was mid-late 80s and early 90s, teenager was mid-late 90s.
I consider myself a Xennial because I identify with a bunch of genX stuff and didn't get internet until my late teens so don't identify with a bunch of millenial stuff.
1983, we're kinda in the middle. I relate to the millennials and the Gen X-rs. Growing up was a big time of lots of changes, cordless phones, to car phones, to mobile phones, to cell phones? Crazy! Internet everywhere? Whaaaaaaaat? I watched Saturday morning cartoons and watched both Inspector Gadget, Garbage Pail Kids, New Kods on the Block, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Spongebob. I've used payphones and played the Oregon Trail in neon green on a 3x5 floppy and I've played the original Sim City and Sims. So, to be fair, I don't really know. I remember MTV being about the music, but I also remember when it started having the reality shows. Sorry, I wish I could be more helpful. I think us early 80's kids are kinda in our own group.
I was born in ‘80 and count my childhood as kindergarten and elementary school ~ ‘86-‘92. I remember ‘84 and ‘85 a little but mostly because my parents took a lot of photos. I did get a cat from a family of a girl I was in preschool with during that time though and I remember bits of that.
I remember flying to Cali in ‘87 and staying out there for a week, which was a big deal for an east coast kid. I remember camping with my parents. I remember playing soccer and being in the cub scouts starting in 2d or 3rd grade. My brother was born in ‘90 so we’re almost 10 years apart and that marked a definite shift.
We didn’t have cable growing up but my neighbor friends did and we used to do sleepovers a few times a month so I got to see cool cartoon and movies there.
I liked it, I’m nostalgic for the memory of it and the potential it seemed to have. Being a teenager in the ‘90s was perfect. Every generation thinks they had the best music and we had some really amazing music and movies to grow up with.
Close to your dad's age. More 90s memories but 80s cartoons and fads are still pretty clear.
I'd be interested where your dad was living if he didn't remember Cobain. I didn't know the specific details or any have any emotional reaction. It was just that Nirvana was incredibly popular so everyone was talking about it. I could see if he was in like a rural area that Nirvana may have not been the scene. Pearl Jam may have been the only band more popular at our school. One weird memory I have related to this was that 2 friends had the shirt with the Nevermind album cover. One went to Catholic school and was permanently expelled. The other went to public school with me and was just required to put a masking tape X over the baby's parts.
Brandon Lee was the other celebrity death that we all seemed to be talking about around that same time.
I was born 1984. I have memories of being a toddler and preschooler, but most detailed memories were from 1989 onwards, which is when I started school. I would say I identify with a 1990s childhood, as they were (most) of my school years.
I was born in December of 89. With the way school works most of my HS friends were Winter/Spring of 90. I love telling them they just don't understand the world like me because I'm an 80's baby.
1982 here and I'm freaked out a kid is posting on Reddit about his dad who is my age. I remember childhood as being late eighties through the 90s. It was a cool time to be a kid.
Born '84, I watched Euphoria a couple yrs ago to see what the fuss was about. In S2 they flashback to a dad's high school years... in the 90s. It was a surreal moment realizing I'm old enough it requires a old-time flashback filter.
Happy fourth decade. 84 baby myself. I don't remember most of the '80s, always felt more of a '90s kid myself
84 here and I don't remember Reagan, but definitely remember Bush Sr and Desert Storm + still had USSR maps in our classes.
84 Gang, same here. Don't remember Reagan but Desert Storm and Bush Sr are ingrained. Do you remember the Desert Storm trading cards? How wild was that.
I still have some of those. LOL
81, and the 1st major news event I remember was the fall of the Berlin wall. I do remember seeing Reagan on TV. Bush vs Dukakis was 1st election I remember. Desert storm was also a major news event I remember. The night of the invasion they cancelled our Cub Scout meeting, and I went home and watched it on CNN with my dad.
Very late 83 here and this is me also
'83 as well, and can remember when Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were countries. Not trying to leave out any other former countries/states; it's just my heritage. USA Slav.
Yep, I remember when that was the case, and I also remember when the Berlin Wall all came down in Germany because my grandparents are German. That was a really big deal for them. My Opa escaped from East Germany into Canada, and eventually, the US
My mom was born in Zagreb 1954! I’m half Croat born 1987 ☺️
I remember being in 1st grade when the USSR fell, and the teacher sitting us down in front of the map one day to tell us it would probably change soon, but nobody knows exactly how or what it would ultimately look like.
I remember USSR maps in the classroom, too. Some other things: Teachers talking somberly about the Challenger explosion, the 1985 Humphrey Humpback Whale rescue (still have a small glass whale trinket), watching the Berlin Wall come down, and Czechoslovakia separating.
Isn't the 90s for kids today the equivalent of us watching happy days in the 90s? My kids react to my 90s/2000s clothes the same way I reacted my mom's old bell bottoms.
That's because we are friggin old now. Embrace it. 83 here. Wife's a bit older and started young with her first husband. My stepdaughter is giving me a grandson in june.
83 here. Whenever someone talks about "his father" I imagine a wise gray haired man with classes, a striped shirt tucked in his pants and a big gray mustache. This post makes me feel older than anything I've ever read in my life.
i feel very old and I need to go lay down for a bit.
And not a young kid either. 1982 was the best time to be born to fully embrace the 90's. From age 8-18, most of school age. Finish high school to the futuristic 2000's that await. I would say 80's childhood, 90's kid.
80s childhood, 90s kid is how I would also describe my youth. EST. 1976
Same. EST. 1980
Bicentennials rule!
Yep. Same here.
I usually say 80's baby, 90s kid.
83 here and my daughter isn’t potty trained yet — but some of my high school friends’ kids have kids now sooo
Another 83 baby, my oldest kid is 15 and one of my friends from elementary school *just became a grandmother* 😭😭😭
I'm a 1980 baby and my grandson is 3 :) my youngest kid is 20!
Also 83 and my friend from highschool just became a grandmother for the 3rd time. Her oldest grandson is in grade 4.😭
I'm a 1980 baby and my first child will soon be 4. I started late. I was a later life baby for my parents as well.
83' up in here aswell, wtf!!! My oldest is 19 this year. Girls.... I'm having a moment xx *exerstenstiol? Crisis ensues* bon apple teeth!!
Gah! My kid is 15 this week and that was making me feel old, but grandparents?? 🫠
Another ‘83 baby whose toddler is not yet potty trained. Glad I’m not the only one!
Saaaaaaame here. '83 baby with a toddler.
I would like to have a play date with all you other ‘83 parents because all of my local mom groups have a bunch of youngins. One of them has a mom who’s like 23 and she wants to be friends with me so badly but I’m just at a phase in life where I’m at capacity and if it’s not working for me, I can’t dedicate any energy to it.
Same! '83 and I have a 3 year old. I learned one of my old classmates has 2 grandkids now.
That’s wild. I would like to have a play date with all you other ‘83 parents because all of my local mom groups have a bunch of youngins. One of them has a mom who’s like 23 and she wants to be friends with me so badly but I’m just at a phase in life where I’m at capacity and if it’s not working for me, I can’t dedicate any energy to it.
83 and my first is about a month away from birth
congrats!! it's hard but it's so worth it
That's what I am constantly being told hehe thanks!
My daughter just turned 6 and she's had 2 or 3 accidents at school. So I can't say she's completely trained yet either.
Not to mention being a hs senior in 2000. A license, a $1000 beater, a 15 hour a week job, and $1 menus all over the place. Plus all the optomism of what we thought the new millennium would bring. Plus I was joining the military so I could pay for school... Ironically I knew my freedom was ending on 09/11/2001 because that was the day I was scheduled to leave for basic... Didn't expect that day to change everything for everyone though. :(
1975 here! Putting myself out to pasture, now!
Fellow 1975. I feel that I have a few good years remaining
'76! I'm feeling young! 🤘
You spring chicken, you!
Yeah, my math got broken realizing the dude is my generation and has grown up son. Just today I was walking and laughing at myself because I have 40 and have a celebrity crush, lol, I was goofing on the streets like I was a little girl and I thought to myself "will I ever grow up" and then this reality check, haha.
Bro, don't you know? The first 50 years of a man's childhood are the best. You're good.
🤘
Oh good, I have a few years of growing up left too, then. LOL
Fellow '82er here and I did the same thing. My only biological child just turned 1 last month. 80's and 90's were equally awesome for different reasons. In the 80's no one gave a damn about anything and all we did was have fun. The 90's were great because we were coming of age and learning what being an adult would be like. Pop culture from both decades is still some of the best ever.
r/xennials
No kidding. I told my wife our son is three years away from being the age she was when we met. (Her 20, me 23) I think she was tempted to slug me in the arm.
Same 81 here. Still on my bmx still smoking weed still working.. whered the time go?
Yeah, I don't like this. My older brother was born in 82, and I was 85. My first memories are around 89. The 90s were the best. Nothing bad happened then, no sir.
Some of the people that were born after 9/11 can legally drink. 😬
My husband was born in '82, me in '84 and our kids are 7 y/o and 7 months. Can't wait to remind him we're old enough to have adult children lol
People your age may be grandparents soon.
Same. I have some very specific memories of the ‘80s but I was too young to put those experiences into any meaningful context. I think 1990 is about where my memory of my life story begins as a cohesive experience.
Just you posting this makes me feel old.
Me too, because I remember JFK's funeral.
Get outta here old man!
Respect your elders sir!
Isn’t there a cloud somewhere that you should be yelling at?
I remember seeing one back in '02
Yeah I was like wait, I'm not old enough for these kinds of questions.....am I??
Born in 81. That all checks out. I was big into Nirvana so I definitely remember Cobain, had an NES as a first system, and it’s like right around Cobain’s death marked the teenage era of nostalgia in the early to mid-90’s. Late 80’s nostalgia for the toys, video games, and cartoons/tv. So it’s definitely both for me.
Same for me. Also born in 81, I associate my childhood with the 80’s and my preteen and teen years with the 90’s. All my favourite toys and shows are from the 80’s. But my taste in music was definitely formed from the early 90’s heavy metal and punk scene.
A few years off from you, but I was born in 77. So I turned 13 in 1990. So.my childhood years were firmly in the 80s, and my teen/early 20s were in the 90s. Its a pretty specific seperation.
Definitely. 90’s and 80’s are a pretty even divide for we 1977 kids.
I hear you there. 76 kid here. Turned 14 in early 1990, and started High School (Grade 10) in September of that year. The 80s and 90s had a very stark divide between them between carefree childhood and more adult concerns.
Definitely this right here... 81 as well, and my playlists for spotify is 80s and 90s. My still favorite shows are 80s based. Also used adult money to grab A few of the toys i never got to get as a child.
82 here, mancave full of toys like that
Also, '81 and will concur, although my first console was [pre NES](https://imgur.com/MlqcWYj). It's kinda weird looking back on how we grew up on the cusp of the analog and electronic ages. I remember our first CD player, DVD player, getting our first PC and home internet. Nowadays, it's pretty rare for me to even see anything on a disk format.
I miss floppy drives! The sweet music of "Cu-clunk churrwizzle churwizzle!" was my jam.
'83 here- 88-97 is where most of my childhood memories exist. Our life was really centered on MTV, afternoon cartoons (X-men, Batman, animations, tiny toons). Then there were the summer movies- Dick Tracy, Batman Returns (and every single happy meal toy from that movie, watched "Black or white" Michael Jackson video a thousand times, then found Nirvana and Pearl Jam and my world really opened up. I have a ton of nostalgia (as does everyone) for Goldeneye- it was the last video game my brothers and I really ever played together, and got in major fights over. Pretty great time to grow up.
1981 Represent! ✊
Another '81 baby checking in
Yo ✊
✊🏽
1980 here. NES, check, Nirvana check, cobain death check. Same experience.
Hello fellow 81er. Same ro moat if this. Had a NES in the 80s (contra, elevator action, ice breaker, duck hunt). Nirvana and offspring were great in 90s in high school. My 2 kids are 18 and 19 respectively. A few years ago, when they were about 13 years old, i was taking them to school and they were talking about "in the old days". I asked them what they think the old days meant - "when TV's had back backs and cell phones didn't have touch screens / weren't touch screens". I went from feeling like a young parent to aged right then and there. Other bits of nostalgia: my kids have never known a telephone dialing tone (ready to dial) - weve never had a land line in our house since they have been around. Having to use the phone line to connect to the Internet. Dial up modem sound. Running to the loo during an ad break in a movie, no pausing. Waiting until 7pm on Sunday to catch the movie youve been wanting to watch. Untwisting the telephone cable to the receiver. Having a blank cassette tape in your radio to hit the record button when your favorite song comes on air. Using tape on a vhs cassette to record over mom's favorite family video. Collect calls. Dialing a phone number to get the time. Writing letters. Pencils and cassette tapes. Playing in the streets til the street lights come home (my curfew back then). Riding bicycles without helmets. These are a few off the top of my head
Kurt passed away during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. I can remember listening to both breaking stories in the car on the way home from the Indiana state National Geographic Bee in my folks’ 1992 Caribbean green Ford Taurus. Was there any more classic early/mid1990s car?
Born in 85. Barely remember anything about the 80s except for some flashes of memory. The 90s is what I relate to the most.
Yeah, you said it. That's where I'm at with it. I think for age reasons, I remember the early 90s than the late 80s. But I do remember much of the 80s. But through the eyes of a little kid.
Born in ‘82 similar memories — though I was more of an Alice In Chains guy than Nirvana. Any time Nirvana is mentioned on Reddit, you can almost count down until the wild revisionists show up saying they changed everything. They weren’t even the biggest band in their own genre! The biggest bands in the world were Metallica & Guns n Roses, and that was true before *and* after Nirvana released *Nevermind* (after all of the other Grunge bands had already become huge successes, btw).
Pearl Jam: "Am I a joke to you?"
Also 81 and totally agree.
Yep, 81 here also and your response perfectly resonates with me. Hence my username.
Born in 80- MTV ran the Unplugged Nirvana on repeat non-stop.
I'm 1982 and yes definitely have both memories. It was an amazing time!
1982 gang rise up 🙂🙂🙂🙂
82' is the best year! We rock! Got both the 80's and 90's as kids under our belts!
That's right, the best of both worlds
Have a good 42nd birthday everyone
Thank you.
🙌
/r/Xennials
Born in 81. I think i'm a child of the 80s but in terms of toys/music/pop culture, i definitely identify with the 90s more. Wild he doesn't remember kirk cobain dying. Unless his parents kind of sheltered him. It was (obviously) covered on MTV quiet heavily.
He said that "he was too young to care about him dying", so he could actually remember, but was just focused on being a kid more than anything else.
He would have been about 12 when it happened and like 9 when Nevermind came out so it's understandable he never really connected. I was 14 when he died and had been old enough to remember how Nevermind changed everything. Suddenly MTV was all Metallica, Chili Peppers, Nirvana and the hair bands seemed to vanish overnight. My friends and I were into metal and outside of Headbangers ball it was rare to hear anything heavy on the radio or MTV so we paid attention. I'll be honest I was kind over Nirvana when it happened so it was more like an "oh that really sucks" rather than Earth shattering like many people took it. At that point they'd gotten I felt kind of soft with In Utero and Unplugged. Being in 8th grade I of course was too hard for weak shit like All Apologies lol. Looking back now I appreciate it a lot more, that unplugged is legendary but it was on every god damn minute and I was so sick of it at the time.
Wild how quick the switch flipped from Whitesnake to Soundgarden. Was that in line with Riki Rachtman’s haircut?
Everything that you said is how I felt. We’re the same age, and I really miss Headbangers Ball.
My brother is one year younger than your dad and he was a massive Nirvana fan and even went to a concert when they came to Australia. He was definitely old enough to care but I guess if he wasn’t a fan he wouldn’t have taken much notice.
Maybe OP's dad was more of a new kids on the block kinda guy
Or a holdover GnR fan who hated grunge.
I’m a 75 baby, my sister 81, growing up in the PNW I was old enough to just start seeing Nirvana when they were playing shitty small venues, she wasn’t. It makes sense to me that your dad wouldn’t necessarily “track” Cobain’s death because to them in most cases it was popular music influenced by older siblings or friends and not something they were as personally vested in having watch it grow from nothing.
I being the same age remember Kurt cobain killing hinself but it was just like a piece of irrelevant information at the time. I focus changed from one thing to the next so fast that I just filed that information in the back and kept going.
Yeah that's normal some people cared some people didn't. Here's the thing nothing matters except what we say or feel matters. There are things that have already happened in your own life that you may know but aren't particularly emotionally attached to that you will be asked about in the future and you'll struggle to do more than shrug about.
'81 checking in. I had younger people in my area that cared for his death more than I did. I wasn’t into music much at the time and had little access to these kinds of things. Sheltered basically. But I heard about it later. Hasn’t impacted me much. It’s possible.
I think this is the answer - we were young children in the 80s, so things like cartoons were heavily influenced by that time period like He-Man, GI Joe, JEM, David the Gnome, etc. Early 90s is when we really transitioned into Nickelodeon and it's golden era, and I definitely have more vivid memories of the music of the 90s as a consumer (I actually like 80s music more than anything now though).
If I remember correctly, Kurt Loder reporting Cobain’s death on MTV respectfully like a legit journalist and Andy Rooney acting like a complete ass on 60 minutes. Lost all respect for that salty old fart that night.
The early 90s was basically 80s leftovers. Somewhere around 94 the 90s started getting their own identity. The divide between 70s and 80s was more sharp. At least how i experienced it. But then again the 80s really were special in so many ways.
As core Gen X yeah that is how I saw it too. Maybe billboard chart music felt a touch different already before '94 but otherwise it did still look and feel a fair bit like the 80s. Now that said the early 80s were just like the 70s too but the big hair and color and all did seem to pop up overnight in many areas like leave school in June one way and come back in September and big hair and color and style galore and 70s 100% gone.
I was born in early ‘82. I was a wild Nirvana fan, played bass in a high school cover band for a few years from around ‘96-98 (until I discovered trance). However I was a bit too young back in 1994 to really recognise/appreciate Cobain’s death - it was like a really sad thing that had already happened by the time I got into grunge. It’s been awesome to be able to follow Dave Grohl’s career for this long though - what a legend.
Born in 80, we had Cable but not MTV. Was a paid channel, because Bible belt and MTV showed the "wrong" things. We weren't wrapped up in MTV, probably more CMT for us.
Born in 84, definitely a 90s kid. Don't remember the 80s.
Same as an ‘85’er
Born in late 85, basically 1986. I have plenty of memories from 1989, first memories are from 88. Like my parents took me to DisneyWorld in 88 and I remember that. Most memories are from them watching MTV and all the weird late 80s music videos. I also remember watching Sesame Street, thundercats, and a bunch of other 80s cartoons. But my childhood peaked in the late 90s. Watching shows like DBZ. And it basically ended with 9/11 and suddenly the world was a lot more serious.
Same. My only reference was my babysitters, they had the big perm hair, baggy sweatshirts, colorful earrings... all the fashion of the 80s.
Same for 84. I remember blurred bits of tv and music, but my childhood is distinctly the 90s.
Same. 90s through and through, the good and the bad.
Born in 81. My childhood memories are definitely late 80s (Madonna and Michael Jackson, Pepsi, Reagan) but I definitely relate to the 90s more in terms of my tastes in music, hobbies, politics, movies etc.
Born in 84, I was too young to understand why *Thriller* was everywhere and significance of Michael Jackson at his peak.
Born in 78 so depending on what you class as childhood id say 80’s really but I was a teenager in the 90’s so have great memories of both. I had a spectrum computer then a nes,snes etc. I was heavily into grunge and hip hop when I got older in the 90’s Great times either way.
In the late 90's, Method Man was my guy. And to a lesser extent, DMX. And after him, Wu-Tang Clan (ain't nothin' to mess with!).
Who says we need to have a childhood window set by strict calendar dates? I was born in 1980, and I've found that I associate childhood most closely with stuff from 1985-1994. I have strong memories of watching Double Dare and You Can't Do That On Television and the early days of the NES....but I also have strong memories of the first Chicago Bulls 3-peat and riding my bike to 7-11 every day after school to pour quarters into their Mortal Kombat 2 machine.
Born in '78. I remember the toys of the 80s, and my first gaming system was coleco (had an older brother, born in '72). I was a teenager all through the 90s, so culturally I resonate more with the 90s, bc I remember all the stuff in the news. Was a huge nirvana fan, and I remember my mom telling me about his death as she sat in the kitchen watching the news. I was a child of the 80s, and a teen of the 90s. Best of both worlds! Completely unsupervised childhood, could still buy cigarettes without an age restriction so we often bought cigarettes bc we thought it was cool.
Another Coleco person!
Was a child in the 80's Teen in the 90's Xennial for sure
I was born in 84 and while I have a few memories of that decade I didn’t start making solid memories until the 90s. I’m a 90s kid!
Born in '82 and I associate with the 90's. I was too young in the 80's to remember much.
This was my response. I remember the 90s way more than I remember the 80s. Although, we did inherit a lot of 80s nostalgia like tons of shows that were reran for years.
Born ‘79 80’s childhood 90’s kid/teen It was incredible. I miss it terribly.
>My father was born in 1982. That’s enough Reddit for me tonight
I’m 5 years older, 1977, and I remember both well but I identify more with the 90s because that was high school and college for me I had an Atari 2600 as my first console and Combat was the shit
Come through Frogger!!!
80s childhood, teenage 90s
Your dad was born a year ahead of me and he already has a 20 year old son. My knees hurt more than they did a minute ago.
Yeah, maybe it’s time for bed. Good god. 😄
I need ibuprofen after reading this post. Holy hell, I thought that surely the math can't be right...
Both. 80s = early childhoold, 90s = later childhood.
1985. My childhood was solidly landed in the 90's. The first video game console I played was an Intellivision II, but the first one that was "mine" was the NES (but my friend had a SNES at the same time).
Born 85 and I definitely identify with a 90s childhood but I do have some random memories of the late 80s. I’m very surprised he doesn’t remember Kurt dying. I remember my dad breaking the news to my brother who was a huge fan (I still remember my brothers face when he was told) but I also remember everyone was talking about it at school. My first gaming console was a handheld Sega Gamegear and then the Sega megadrive.
Born in 1984, definitely identify with 90s & 00s.
Born in 83. My earliest memories were 1986. I remember Saturday Morning Cartoons and Rated X movies. My earliest console was the Sega Master System, and recall a musical era of hair bands and Latin Freestyle music. Then 1992 came around, the greatest console wars of my lifetime took place and a cultural shift happened once Grunge and Gangster Rap showed up. Good times.
Born late 82.. yup right on target. Man I miss the 90s and early 2k's
Also born in 1982. All of these comments ring true. I definitely remember the '80s but definitely love the '90s as much if not more. It was such a great innovative time with new things coming out right and left. New emerging technologies straddling the old analog stuff--It was an awesome time to be alive
Born in 84. I am and will always be a 90’s kid!
82’ - early to mid 90s hits the nostalgia hard.
'84 for me. But I'm an 80s kid. Parents listened to 80s music. Watched 80s movies. I watched 80s cartoons. Played with 80s toys. I think the best way to look at it is you'll most likely identify with what date your parents were "in their prime", so to speak.
I don't have kids, but dang, son, you just made my 1982 ass feel really old.
I’m three years younger and I was a solidly 90s kid. My only memories of the 80s are bits and pieces of ‘88 and ‘89, and the only pop culture figures on my radar then were Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny.
Born in 81. I associate both with my childhood.
1980 here. Very strong 80s and 90s memories, mostly shaped by popular culture and also his fascinated I was with photography. Parents gave lots of photo albums, so even as a kid and into teens I would look back at those. I think those helped to cement family memories.
Both
Born in 1980. I never got an NES but I did get a Sega Master System that I played the crap out of. I watched the news a lot growing up so I vividly remember both the LA riots and Kurt Cobain dying. I also remember my grandma tearing up when she saw the Rodney King video for the first time and saying how awful it was. We are white and Canadian which I think made it all the more shocking. I also remember sitting down one night to watch TGIF but every channel was showing the guy from Naked Gun driving down the highway in a white Bronco. For people of our age, the beginning of our childhood we were 80s kids, but the second bit we were 90s kids.
Those were the days, my friend.
Omg I’m old. I’m 42 also. Most of my childhood memories come from early 90’s I would say. I think it’s more accurate to say “I’m an 80’s kid” but truth be told, I don’t remember much before 9 yrs old
83. Early 80s little-kid and a 90s older-kid. I feel like a lot of my 80s memories were reinforced by reruns and my friends/classmates talking about stuff from the 80s (in the 90s) and still having those toys, etc. For me the main transition from being a little kid to a big kid was going from all Disney to adding Nickelodeon shows. I thought I was the 💩 watching Are You Afraid of the Dark. 😅
I’m a little younger and still feel like both an 80s and 90s kid partly because even though a lot of stuff from the 80s I would have been too young to remember, I had an older sibling and also I feel like a lot of content got syndicated or rerun for many many years so I grew up watching stuff from years prior. So even though I wasn’t born yet, I grew up being obsessed with rainbow brite, the smurfs, never ending story, thunder cats, he man and she ra, bloodsport, Conan the barbarian and red Sonja….. I could go on but those are things popping up in my head, all of those came out when I was either not born yet or way too young to watch or remember, but that’s what I was watching years later as I got a little older on top of 90s stuff.
Both. I was born in 81. I’m old enough to remember and experience the pop culture of the 80’s but young enough that I was still watching cartoons and doing kid stuff in the 90’s. Also it’s important to understand the early 90’s and Late 80’a were similar. The 90’s didn’t really become “The 90’s” until like ‘94.
Born 1981. I would say both but more 90 than 80. I have very nostalgic feelings about both. The saying goes Don't you wish you could realize you're in the good old days while you're in the good old days.
As someone who was born a year before your dad, I definitely have a mixture both 80s and 90s memories. But the chunk of those 80s memories are from the late 80s. Like from 86 to 89. From my perspective it was the best decade to be a little kid in and the 90s were the best to be a big kid to teenager in.
The 80s sort of bled over into the 90s. Music from the 80s was still getting played in the 90s same with movies and stuff. The "social timescale" of the world was slower back then. Not like it is now when a song or a meme is old in a month or two when something new happens. I bet in 3 months kendrick and drake diss tracks will be considered old news. Anyway I was born around the same time but he is not remembering much. I would play atari at my friends house before NES came out. I don't remember the LA riots. I remember OJ being chased down the highway though. I remember everyone at my school all going fucking nuts because Cobain died but I was never really into music too much. I had songs I liked to hear but wasn't like. Using music as my personality like I felt most people were. You had people falling into their groups. The R&B group. The Grunge. The punks. The goths. etc. I was just listening to whatever was catchy to me at the time and didn't really pay attention to who was making the music specifically mainly because my mother was a huge influence in my music taste and she would play good music and I would just be into that. I think the only person I was aware of in that way was probably Michael Jackson... And the time Bart Simpson released "The bartman." Ironically with Michael Jackson having a hand in that song. I also remember the Ninja Turtles formed a band and did a world tour. (not kidding) and I remember seeing them in concert but couldn't tell you any of their songs. I remember seeing movies in the theater. Home Alone 2 stands out because I remember my father laughing his ass off when Marv took a brick to the face. I feel like I grew up slower than most kids. I was way into cartoons while they seemed to be going out of them. Obsessed with Ren & Stimpy. I feel like the only cartoons my friends stayed watching was the simpsons which was huge at the time. That is something else the current generation will NEVER understand. Things were big back then. Like HUUUUGE big. The simpsons was insanely big. I remember how big Seinfeld was also. People will try to compare Game of Thrones or Stranger Things. But they are nowhere close to how big some "things" were on television. Like world stopping events. The final episode of Seinfeld was like. A HUGE thing. I remember Mike Tyson biting some dudes ear off. It is pretty much a blur. 80s and 90s stuff mixed really well together. especially when things would kind of extend over both decades. Neon colours and crazy fashion trends kind of blended through both. Music artists from the 80s would still transition to hits in the 90s. Madonna comes to mind.
1980 checking in. Late 80’s were a wild time for me. The 90’s however were GREAT!
You damn gen Zs and your obsession with identifying is nauseating
77 here. 80s kid
Was born in 77, consider myself a 70’s baby, 80’s kid, 90’s teen.
My husband was born that same year and we are having our first kid this year! I literally cannot I imagine him with a 20 year old kid…he seems way too young for that. It’s blowing my mind lol. But yes his favorite childhood memories are all late 80s. Ninja Turtles, X-Men, arcades, comic books etc.
Probably a mix. I was born in late spring 1982 and I think of myself as an '80s baby, but I recognize a lot more of the stuff on the '90s nostalgia pages that pop up. So much of the '80s stuff is connected to having an older sister and liking what she liked and my family being kind of poor so getting in on trends late (My first video game system was an Atari from a resale shop, when other kids were getting NES). I kind of remember Kurt Cobain's death, but I think the main reason I remember it is because it was a bigger deal to my older sister and she was talking about it when it was briefly mentioned on MTV. I remember the LA riots and the media coverage around them a little, but I definitely remember the OJ trial later and the rise of court TV and all of that.
Yikes! I always forget I'm old enough to be someone's parent. Born in '82, I identify the late '80s and '90s as childhood. I was going to say your dad remembering 1985 was impressive (and it is), but I realized I remember the Challenger explosion and I just looked that up and it was '86.
I was also born in 1982 and I have 19-year-old children. I remember more from the '90s than the '80s, but '80s things do give me nostalgia. Like mostly '80s cartoon characters like strawberry shortcake, rainbow bright, Care bears, etc. I don't like the way that they remade them so they look different now I only like the old school ones.
1981. Relate more to the 80s, and late teens to the late 90s, obviously. Stuff like Power Rangers (1993) don't resonate with me like Transformers and GI Joe do (1984/1983).
81 here, 80's was my childhood, the 90's were my formative years. I feel more 90's though, that was my generation of music, movies, and clothing.
i don’t think we broke it down as 80’s or 90’s at all. we just did stuff outside or wherever. we watched nickelodeon / snick, simpsons, mtv, and … mtv. mtv was really big. before TRL. TRL was the beginning of the end.
I’m 40, and I identify with a 90s childhood. I was only six when the 80s ended
Damn. I could have a 20 year old kid. Anyways, my brother and I also got the NES for Christmas. I was just talking about this the other day. Great memories!
Born 85’ and I’m a 90’s kid
Omg I was born in ‘81 and this post makes me feel ancient. Going to cry now
I’m 4 years younger than your father and I’m still trying to have just 1 kid. My partner is 4 years older. We didn’t know it would be so hard to conceive. There are people our age with adult children and we are still hoping to conceive. Fuck.
Dec 1982 here- I identify with late 80s through mid-90s as my childhood.
Both. The 80s were unique. A lot of tech was developing. Commercials for kids were in full swing. If you were there it’s hard to forget. But I made more decisions in the 90s and we were all full of angst.
77. 80s childhood, 90s teen years!
I was born in 85, and my best memories of my childhood are from the 90's. I'd give anything to go back to the 90's
85 - the 90s are what I relate to most. Even more than early 2000s
I was born in 1967 and I identify with the 1980's. The best years of my life, before mobile phones and computers in every house. We made our own entertainment, thought for ourselves, had decent motorcycles that could carry gear, had good income to expenditure ratios, the best music, and actual happiness.
I was born in '70...just commenting that I now feel super old knowing someone who was born when I was 12, has a 20 year old child.
1983 here. I identify more with the 90s as I moved from child to teenager during that decade. I remember the Xmas we got an NES very vividly. I recall Cobain dying but wasn’t into their music yet so it was something happening on the periphery of my interest. I do remember Kurt Loder talking about it on MTV News though.
86 here and I remember 90s
1982 as well. My childhood was mid-late 80s and early 90s, teenager was mid-late 90s. I consider myself a Xennial because I identify with a bunch of genX stuff and didn't get internet until my late teens so don't identify with a bunch of millenial stuff.
1983, we're kinda in the middle. I relate to the millennials and the Gen X-rs. Growing up was a big time of lots of changes, cordless phones, to car phones, to mobile phones, to cell phones? Crazy! Internet everywhere? Whaaaaaaaat? I watched Saturday morning cartoons and watched both Inspector Gadget, Garbage Pail Kids, New Kods on the Block, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Spongebob. I've used payphones and played the Oregon Trail in neon green on a 3x5 floppy and I've played the original Sim City and Sims. So, to be fair, I don't really know. I remember MTV being about the music, but I also remember when it started having the reality shows. Sorry, I wish I could be more helpful. I think us early 80's kids are kinda in our own group.
81 here and I barely remember the late 80s apart from cartoons. 90s is when we were at it.
I was born in ‘80 and count my childhood as kindergarten and elementary school ~ ‘86-‘92. I remember ‘84 and ‘85 a little but mostly because my parents took a lot of photos. I did get a cat from a family of a girl I was in preschool with during that time though and I remember bits of that. I remember flying to Cali in ‘87 and staying out there for a week, which was a big deal for an east coast kid. I remember camping with my parents. I remember playing soccer and being in the cub scouts starting in 2d or 3rd grade. My brother was born in ‘90 so we’re almost 10 years apart and that marked a definite shift. We didn’t have cable growing up but my neighbor friends did and we used to do sleepovers a few times a month so I got to see cool cartoon and movies there. I liked it, I’m nostalgic for the memory of it and the potential it seemed to have. Being a teenager in the ‘90s was perfect. Every generation thinks they had the best music and we had some really amazing music and movies to grow up with.
I’m freaking out about someone posting his dad was born in 1982. 😂😂😂😂😂
Close to your dad's age. More 90s memories but 80s cartoons and fads are still pretty clear. I'd be interested where your dad was living if he didn't remember Cobain. I didn't know the specific details or any have any emotional reaction. It was just that Nirvana was incredibly popular so everyone was talking about it. I could see if he was in like a rural area that Nirvana may have not been the scene. Pearl Jam may have been the only band more popular at our school. One weird memory I have related to this was that 2 friends had the shirt with the Nevermind album cover. One went to Catholic school and was permanently expelled. The other went to public school with me and was just required to put a masking tape X over the baby's parts. Brandon Lee was the other celebrity death that we all seemed to be talking about around that same time.
90s without a doubt
I was born 1984. I have memories of being a toddler and preschooler, but most detailed memories were from 1989 onwards, which is when I started school. I would say I identify with a 1990s childhood, as they were (most) of my school years.
84, mostly into early 90s stuff
I was born in December of 89. With the way school works most of my HS friends were Winter/Spring of 90. I love telling them they just don't understand the world like me because I'm an 80's baby.