Top 5 Reasons it Rocked to be a Middle Schooler in the Late '90s

I had been at a loss thinking of a fun, new Top 5 list until @Shanetron Tweeted a response to me claiming I was "6th grade boy crazy. insert your own titanic/lfo/otown joke." For some reason this sent me into a small fit of laughter - and I realized, the late '90s were amazing. Man, life in middle school in the late '90s (physical awkwardness and petty friendships aside) was easygoing, hilarious, and full of cultural jokes.

#1.) Our biggest worry in the winter of 6th grade was whether or not our tally of seeing Titanic was higher than every other girl on the A list.

Oh, and if you had all the lyrics to My Heart Will Go On memorized AND had a life situation that could relate - you were the creme de la creme at the lunch table.

#2.) The biggest ongoing worry was making sure you didn't have after school detention so that you could rush home or to your Best Friend Forever bracelet partner's house to watch TRL and make sure *NSYNC was for sure going to make it to 60 times at #1.


#3.) Could you recite all of the lyrics to Pretty Fly for a White Guy at the after school dance in 7th grade??

What about Chumbawumba's Tubthumping? One Week? If you were a guy and could sing all the lyrics to these hard-to-follow songs, you could get all the honeys on the dance floor. Not to mention you'd be the coolest among your group of guy friends who wanted to be like you. Sweater with the one strip across the chest included.

#4.) You spent the summer between 7th and 8th grade going to see the second Austin Powers movie with 12 of your friends (and always got stuck being the one getting to the theatre early and saving a whole row of seats with M&M baggies, a purse, and both jelly shoes). And you wished you could be one of the people in LFO's video. And that you had enough "my own money" to buy a new abercrombie&fitch shirt to wear to the fair.


#5.) Vitamin C's graduation song came out for the class of 2000. Ok so maybe it was meant for the high school class of 2000, but 8th grade deserved some mad cred. We had everything to look forward to - Homecoming at high school actually meant something. We learned how to make cinnamon rolls in FACS (Family and Consumer Sciences. Our generation's new p.c. term for Home Ec). Spring actually still arrived when spring break rolled around somewhere between March 18 and March 31. Daylight Savings still happened in April. Our parents were able to hand over $10 when we walked out into the living room and said, "Katie's mom is going to pick me up and take us to the mall...."

Oh, and thanks to Sisco, we knew how to PARTY with the Thong Song.