The other day I was trying to explain to my son the beauty of the nineties. After playing a rousing game of Heads Up on our iPhone’s with some friends, I was chatting with him about random pop culture that is ancient history to his young mind. Both Derek and I knew we had our work cut out for us.

This is my running list of what I want my kids to know (since they missed the 90’s)

Darling Jericho, Supermarket Sweep is legit. Since you weren’t around to witness its awesomeness you’ll have to believe me. I remember sitting around watching it every day after school. I LOVED it. I would imagine I was there with the contestants racing for the expensive meats and guesstimating the cost per item. I recently found out you can find old episodes on youtube. Needless to say, I have big plans for Friday night.

Notorious BIG. Even in elementary school, Biggie was a BIG deal. Jericho is a fan… I mean, he has no other choice.

Lunchables, not the ones you see today, young one. In fact, I spotted one cozied up to the deli meats, only to find mini cinnamon rolls as a Lunchable. NOOOOOOO!!!! That my sweet son is called dessert, and packaging it like a Lunchable is doing me NO favors. I’m talking about the meat, cheese, crackers, and chocolate mint.

Jericho, all the girls had scrunchies. You were only cool if you had a wrist loaded with scrunchies. You needed multiple colors and it did not matter if you sported one in your hair. In fact, I found my arm proved a sufficient catwalk for the model scrunchie. Never mind that my hair was way to heavy to mess with one. I was so smooth with wrists full of scrunchies.

For the love, AOL was the bomb.com. We all thought we were so legit as we dialed up after school to log onto AOL to send emails, and spend the afternoon on AOL chat. So bomb. Now if I even see someone with an AOL email account I wonder about their personal understanding of the Internet.

Jericho, you are never going to guess… while the girls had their scrunchies the guys had their chain wallets. All the cool kids had ’em. I need you to know that if you choose this path no one is trying to steal your library card and $1 bill for the pop machine.

The chain wallet hit our house hard. I don’t ever remember a time my brother didn’t have a chain wallet. In fact, he still may have one. I wouldn’t be surprised one bit.

If I’m mentioning chain wallets we must not forget flare leg jeans, Jericho. I’m not talking about a dainty flare, that one may find at the Gap. I’m talking obnoxiously flarey.

Oh, dear son, you missed an epic time to be alive, but I know your generation will have their own iconic ways of life that will mark your youth. Until then, we will review what you’ve missed.

Now your turn. What were some of your favorite shows, movies, or trends of the 90’s?