09/01/2026
Here is to another decade down!
Things only 40-year-olds remember growing up
* 📞 Having to get off the internet because someone needed the phone
* 💻 The sound of dial-up internet connecting
* 📺 Getting yelled at because you were “hogging the phone line”
* 📼 Rewinding a VHS before returning it to Blockbuster
* 🎬 Be Kind, Rewind
* 📺 Watching Saturday morning cartoons because there was no Netflix
* 🕹️ Nintendo cartridges that you had to blow on to make them work
* 🎮 Losing your saved game because someone turned off the Nintendo
* 💿 Making a mixtape for someone you liked
* 📻 Waiting for your favorite song to come on the radio so you could hit RECORD
* 📟 Pagers/beepers being considered high-tech
* 📱 Cell phones that were basically bricks
* 📸 Taking pictures and having NO IDEA if they turned out
* 🖼️ Getting film developed and waiting days to see your pictures
* 💵 Gas being under $2 a gallon
* 🍔 McDonald’s meals costing pocket change
* 🛍️ Going to the mall just to walk around with your friends
* 👗 Limited Too, Delia’s, Wet Seal, and Claire’s
* 👟 JNCO jeans being somehow considered fashionable
* 💄 Lip Smackers being basically an entire personality
* 🖊️ Writing your crush’s name on your notebook
* 📓 Passing notes in class and praying the teacher didn’t catch you
* 🏠 Leaving the house all day with your friends and your parents having zero way to contact you
* 🚲 Riding your bike around the neighborhood until the streetlights came on
* 🌙 “Come home when the streetlights come on.”
* 📺 Watching TV and having to wait until the commercials were over
* 🎥 Friday night meant renting a movie
* 📰 Looking something up in an encyclopedia instead of Google
* 🗺️ Printing MapQuest directions and hoping you didn’t miss a turn
* 🖥️ Windows 95/98
* 💾 Floppy disks that held basically nothing
* 🖨️ The horrifying sound of a dial-up fax machine
* 🎶 Limp Bizkit, Britney Spears, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, Eminem, Nirvana, TLC and Alanis Morissette being part of the soundtrack
* 📻 TRL actually determining what was cool
* 📞 Calling your friend’s house and asking “Is ___ there?”
* ☎️ Having to memorize everyone’s phone number
* 👩🦱 Plucking your eyebrows into oblivion because thin brows were everything
* 🧴 Sun-in, butterfly clips, crimped hair and body glitter
* 👖 Low-rise jeans that absolutely did not need to make a comeback
* 🖨️ Printing directions, homework, and resumes instead of just sending them digitally
* 🔥 Burning CDs and making the perfect playlist
* 📹 Recording things on a camcorder that weighed approximately 14 pounds
* 🎂 Getting your birthday announced on the radio
* 💻 AIM away messages being your first form of emotional oversharing
* ❤️ “ASL?” being a completely normal internet question
* 😭 And somehow surviving all of this without a smartphone, GPS, or Google
