Has anyone ever really listened to the lyrics to Weird Al’s White and Nerdy? It’s supposed to make fun of a certain type of kid, but really, it was all of us in that are from the ‘90s. Mowing lawns for $10, Minesweeper (even though we didn’t know how to play), ping pong, trivia wizards, X-Men comic collecting, fanny packs, bubble wrap, and secretly dreaming of renaissance fairs but were too afraid of the judgement. Yes, every kid was a nerd in the ‘90s we were just all afraid to admit it. Now that we’ve grown up and realize that we have nothing to be ashamed of, we can look back and laugh at ourselves.

The best way to do that is through the modern-day handwritten notes that we call memes. Meme culture is one of the best things that have come out of this new generation, and we are proud to utilize it. When Uranus and swimsuit editions of sports magazines are the dirtiest things you talked about in school, you know that you’re a ‘90s kid without internet.

In honor of everyone who has ever related to the ‘90s, we have a gazillion memes or you to enjoy as you wear your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pajamas and sip on your Capri Sun (unless you prefer Yahoos).

25 I See No Difference

This actually looks like the dweeb and the nerd. The kid with his haircut and oh-so-90s outfit is the one all the girls had a crush on. When in actuality, the one on the right is all of us. We had video games, Tamagotchi, DBZ, Pokémon, and DIY ten-year-old pizza treats. Seeing this actually makes me want to cry because this was the best time in my life and I will surely miss it for all eternity.

You do know that when we all go through our midlife crisis we’ll be sitting at home with Lunchables and Nintendo 64s wasting our life away rather than cheating or losing our hair, right? Our childhood was so healthy compared to most. Trauma is saved data being lost and crashing your bike into a sticker bush.

24 This Virus Will Infect The Entire Planet

These days they use much more complicated means that are way easier to spread. But back in the day, the floppy disk was what controlled the online world, or even the PC world. There was one in Serial Experiments Lain, Ghost in the Shell, and Sonic X not so long ago. But before then, they were scattered everywhere. They were either used to spread a virus that would soon take control of everyone who saw it or it would tell the president of a secret organization that he needed to halt the launch of a certain missile.

These days we have texts, free downloads, torrents, and so much more. But then, it was no simple task to be a villain. Way to go for being a genius, Shredder.

23 Bye, Bye, Bye

Kids these days will assume that the ‘90s Justin Timberlake is photoshopped. But they don’t know that he wasn’t Justin Timberlake back then, he was ‘N Sync’s lead singer. That was all. He made it big then and he made it big as a solo artist. Whoop-dee-doo! We might be jealous when we say that his hair looks like cheap ramen, but it seems that’s what modern-day Justin is living off of.

You can just see the JT on the right saying, “Aren't you somethin' to admire. 'Cause your shine is somethin' like a mirror.” Then the one on the left going, “Cause in a room full of people you're the only one around. And nothing in this world could ever bring us down. Baby I'll be there telling you I care. This I swear, it’s just the two of us, the two of us!”

22 Quarter Stealing Jerk

These machines were the best! Whether it was an arcade game or a claw machine. When we went anywhere, we prayed that there’d be a machine we could use our one quarter on. If we got lucky, we’d get two or three then dumbly put them all in a machine that didn’t work. And no, it would never give you your quarter back. You can push it fifty times and nothing would happen. A big fat lie of a machine that stole more quarters than your dryer stole socks. Good luck asking for more or convincing your parents to let you ask the cashier why it wouldn’t work. It might have perturbed you then, but your parents actually did know that nothing would be done about it.

21 Can You Still Smell Them?

There are a few scents in life that never really leave you. Some are bad and some are good. For example, the smell of a library or a new baby doll. The nostalgia burns your nostrils and brings tears to your eyes. It’s so beautiful. Another one of those smells was a new VHS movie. It was more the case than the VHS tape really. I’m convinced that they put some sort of clearcoat on them to trick us into enjoying the movie more. To crave the smell and convince us to buy more.

It really worked because just looking at this picture make some really need to watch Oliver and Company, Lady and the Tramp, and Pocahontas. And I can’t watch them online, I need to open those cases.

20 And Your Brother Tugs On The Cord

We take our phones these days for granted. For starters, does anyone really know how many lives have been saved due to cellphones? Not to mention that built-in GPS is way better than an atlas. But even more than that, texting is like the privacy level of those password journals girls used to get in the early 2000s. With invisible ink! Back in the ‘90s, if we wanted to have a private conversation, we talked eerily quiet and shut the phone cord in the door, pulling it taut so that when dad walked through he would get laryngeal trauma from the impact. Because he’s blind!

Even then, mom would be yelling at you to not break the cord and your brother/sister would sneak into your room and wrap the cord around you. And all you wanted was to try the whole, “no you hang up first” game.

19 Gonna Need A Bigger Pocket

CDs were more of a 2000s thing as most of us had cassette players. But the point is, our Walkman was always too big for our coat pockets. What if you wanted to walk with your music and stay warm? It was worse when you didn’t have your jacket though because then where were you supposed to put it. I was so glad when I finally got a belt clip for the belt I never wore. It’s nice that nowadays everything is small so we can easily carry them around with us. Because before we had a huge phone, a huge Walkman, a huge pager, and a huge portable gaming system with a brick of a charger. No wonder kids loved backpacks and fanny packs were cool. They were incredibly handy.

18 Clack, Clack, Clack

While you can smell the VHS tapes, you can no doubt hear the sound of this clacker toy to this day, can’t you? Every birthday party, county fair, and dollar shop had them. Why we got one at least every year is beyond me because they must have been annoying to listen to. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It never stopped. The sound is still kind of soothing, but if you had too many younger siblings, it had to have been ridiculously frustrating. Now, move your hand like you’re playing one of these, it’s so easy to go back in time.

You even remember that first time you were brave enough to try to smash your hand between the balls. Not as climactic or painful as you thought.

17 Is That Charizard?

Pokémon cards are becoming more and more valuable, but we didn’t collect them for that reason. We collected them because it was fun…and cool! We all had our binders and favorite decks, and that one small folder labeled “special cards” that had not so valuable foils in them. Unless you were lucky enough to have one of those books that listed the value of all cards in existence. Now we just use the internet, but at the time, those things were everything! It stopped us from getting conned out of our $5 cards. Whew!

We knew what we were doing though because most of us kept up with those cards and still have them in mint condition, right? Who are we kidding! We all had that Charizard at one point!

16 Waiting On Your Name To Be Called

Why is this exact toy seared into our brains? We can still feel the wooden blocks and how it felt to slide them along the metal wire. This toy was in every waiting room ever! Whether we were waiting for our name to be called at the doctor or waiting for your mom to get her root canal, this was there. We don’t know what it’s called or where it came from, but it was like a complete entertainment system when we were toddlers. If we were lucky enough to bring our Hot Wheels or Power Rangers action figures, then they had an amazing jungle gym to do all their battle tricks on.

And the truth is, after we got older and were in school, we secretly wanted to play with it but didn’t want to be made fun of.

15 Which X Is Yours?

Exactly! Xs, OoooooOoh, they haunt me. I’m so glad that someone finally said this because it needed to be said. Almost every controller has an X on it and they are all in a different place. So when you play with a friend on a different console than you are used to and they say to press X then yell at you when you press Y, it can get frustrating.

Can we please all understand this. If your kid is asking you to play Xbox and you’re used to the Game Cube, you gotta show them what it’s all about and do the switcheroo on them. We all speak different gamer languages, which one do you speak? Xbox, GameCube, PlayStation, Super Nintendo, or something else?

14  Nap Time All Around!

What’s better than going to school, listening to the teacher talk all day, then being questioned even though you didn’t raise your hand? Pretty much everything, including having your head sewn to the carpet. But what rocked was the “easy day” at school where all you had to do was watch a VHS that would tell you about something you may or may not have already known. Even if you liked school, you liked this day the best because you got to hear someone else talk that wasn’t your Ben Stein of a teacher. In the ‘90s (and today too really) everything was ten times better in video form, and it’s way easier to get by with sleeping when the video is playing as the teacher isn’t staring you down.

13 On The Playground Is Where- Oops!

It’s funny how even people who didn’t watch Fresh Prince know the words to this song. But it doesn’t matter because everyone watched it! We did the Carlton and thought Ashley was adorable, Hilary was a spoiled brat, and Geoffrey was a boss. But we loved them each and every one. But the most iconic thing about the show was that song. There were quite a few songs that run along the same lines of getting stuck in your head like, “I wanna be the very best…” or “So no one told you life was gonna be this way…” or even, “Suuunny day, sweeping the….”

We need more iconic songs like these in our lives because commercial jingles are getting old. “Like a good neighbor…”

12 Dagnabbit Lack Of Filters

How many pictures have you taken this week? Ten? Fifty? Two-hundred? In the ‘90s you either had a disposable camera or one that took film. If you had film, that was anywhere from 12 to 40 photos. Imagine spending the money on that roll of film and none of the pictures turning out right. Try a disposable and the quality is way worse and yet you won’t spend any less. More if you need a waterproof one because every kid wanted a waterproof camera.

It looks like humanity is getting better looking, but actually, we’re just getting better camera filters, better makeup tips, and better clothing. It isn’t us, it’s everything around us. If you took a photo back in the ‘90s, there was no faking what you looked like (talking to you Tinder date).

11 Choose Your Static

Playing at the park was beautiful torture as a kid. You’d get stuck under the merry-go-round, you’d miss your landing when jumping off the swing (even though your parents told you not to jump out), and you’d have to use the restroom really bad but all you get is, “you should have gone before we left.”

But out of all of these, the worst was those slides. The long metal ones were a blast but they were hotter than hell. You literally got burned. Then we have the tunnel one which took threads of hair from your head and made you look like Albert Einstein all the while sending shockwaves down your back. Did that mean we stopped using them? Never! Live life to its fullest.

10 Adulthood In A Koopa (Nut) Shell

I’ve never once seen a better analogy for adulthood in my life. You think everyone is going just peachy fine until you have almost accomplished something, then boom! You realize that you’ve been doing it wrong the entire time. This happens once every couple of years and you’ll have a mental breakdown. But then you pick yourself up and start another race in hopes that you’ve learned something from your mistakes. Pretty sure this happens your entire life and all of those old people know it. It’s why they hate Mario Kart and call every racing game Mario Kart. They relate to it in a level we can never understand. We constantly crash into walls. The only way to recover is sabotage someone else and surpass them. Wait…

9 Why You Leave Me Hanging?

Ask any ‘90s kid who the best basketball player of all time was and they’d tell you it was Michael Jordan. We really didn’t know any better, he was so cool, and then Space Jam came out and the rest was history. Anyone who can roll with Lola Bunny and space bullies is a legend in our book. And Nike paired with Michael Jordan and that short kid had all of the best commercials!

Now, everyone sees Michael Jordan as a meme. But he’s more than a meme. He’s so much more than a meme. He is and will always be one of our idols. Why? Because he was everyone else’s idol, and that kind of circle never ends. We had to at least pretend to like what our friends did.

8 Please Move On

Why did Sony have this awful problem of getting stuck on that loading screen? It was really annoying and kept us there with our hearts beating fast and our fingers crossed. We weren’t sure what we needed to d to fix it other than turn it off, hold down as many buttons as possible, blow on stuff. That was the extent of our knowledge before we gave up and played N64. Which was never a bad thing, really.

Wanna hear something funny though? The new Sony Xperia phones are having the exact same problem. The company has been making electronics since the 1970s and they still can’t get rid of that logo screen problem! Better than the red ring of death? Depends who you ask.

7 Meredith!

Looking back, she wasn’t that bad. But at the time, Meredith Blake (even the name hurts to say) was a disgusting creature. The Parent Trap was Lindsay Lohan’s best film and the wonderful actress Elaine Hendrix made it so much better because she was so easy to hate! She hated kids and only tried to marry Nick because of his money. So naturally, it was so entertaining when her comeuppance came and we say the twins put a lizard on water bottle and rocks in her backpack. When she chokes on that lizard it’s even better, and when she is given sugar water to keep mosquitoes away, we nearly lost it! But the best was likely when the twins somehow get her mattress onto the lake. Good times.

6 Stop Reminding Me

Only people who were Never Been Kissed fans will catch this reference. We’ve all changed through the years. Some of us used to wear culottes, scrunchies, and thought that wetting our hair made it look shiny rather than greasy. We were wrong. But we’ve changed! It’s not Panda Amanda anymore, she’s only kept one panda keepsake and it was Lisa Frank, so it doesn’t count. As for Breath Mint Brad, well, he still needs a breath mint, but we’ll let it slide since we only see him alone on Facebook.

The point is, we all change and Facebook likes to remind us of who we were. Josie Grossie is the best person to represent that change in our book. Even if her first kiss was her teacher.