KIDS OF THE DASHING 90S
“We are from different countries but we had similar childhood and this is what makes it amazing”
You are probably reading this title and thinking that I wrote an article about kids of the mafia: these kids that had everything plus a wardrobe loaded with guns, the so-called “Дети Бандитов” of our time. No, we were a bit different!
We were these kids of the dashing 90s: 50% domestic and 50% wild. We were roaming the streets on our bikes with our friends. We stayed outside scared to go home for water as parents wouldn’t let us out after that. We used the old laminate to ski from the hills in winter successfully breaking a nose at the end. We used leaves as the form of money forming our bureaucracy in the imaginary world. We were the kids that would splash you with water if you were brave enough to pass too close to the open balcony. We used to buy bubble gum with tattoos and stick them everywhere or that gum that looked like a cigarette. We were little rebels of our time with big dreams for the future!
It makes me a bit sad to look at the kids today and see how they are wasting their time glued to the screens. I was throwing a rock in a fresh cow pop with my friends to see who it would hit first while a kid now records videos for TikTok. I was playing a ‘real angry birds’ games annoying birds in the village while kids play ‘Angry Birds’ on their phones. I was asking to stay at the grandma’s house as I knew she would allow staying outside until the late evening. I was pretending that I was Flora from Winx and truly believing that one day I would discover my hidden power. I was the one that believed all of the scary stories told by the campfire late at night. I was living in my imaginary world thinking that jumping on the bed 10 times instead of 5 would save my family from all of the bad things in life. I had all of these unforgettable memories that kids are missing out on right now.
To the reader: Were we actually the last generation of people that enjoyed their free-roaming childhood outside of 4-walls apartments?
Why are you reading it now? Kids of the dashing 90s might fall through or might become a whole new project. The world needs to see these stories, see these faces of the 90s kids, and experience it all again with us through our stories. In this article, I have gathered stories of four of my friends and their further wishes for the following generation. In this collaboration, I am the one to share their stories with the world and you will be our invisible readers!
Olena Dmytrenko, Nini Pkhakadze, Luka Gotsiridze, and Maria Kondrasheva are our storytellers today. Olena is from Ukraine. Nini and Luka come from Georgia. Maria is from Russia.
To the reader: Now settle down in your chair and enjoy these four stories
Olena described her childhood as one of the best times that a kid could ask for. “I loved my childhood as I spent so much quality time with friends outside. We were never scared to do crazy things and to make new friends.” She described that time full of happy memories that she would keep forever. “We would go with my friends on bike rides, play games. We would watch cartoons on the TV and then play like we are characters in that cartoon.”
“We were about 8 or 9 when we decided to play as if we are in a mental institution. We would prepare cereals and put them in the empty boxes and pretend like they were a medicine that we had to take as patients. And we would run around the streets screaming song by tATu “Not Gonna Get Us” on top of our lungs while “doctors” were chasing us.”
For Olena, precious memories about that time involved her friends. “We were all connected with friends from the neighborhood. They were not the people with whom I went to school with or was in one class. But they were people with whom I spent hours outside in the summer.” She describes this connection as one of the best moments of that time. “We didn’t need cell phones. The connection with people was one of the best feelings. But as we grew up, we got disconnected, and this friendship that we had just faded away.”
“Kids today don’t know what it’s like to be outside”
“Our childhood was so much better than what kids have now.” Olena talked about how kids today have a lot of opportunities to learn even from the iPad. However, it will never be that childhood that she had. “I think when they grow up and somebody will ask them about their childhood or they would start sharing some memories with their friends, it will not be the same. We are from different countries but we had similar childhood and this is what makes it amazing.”
Nini described her childhood as a very precious, extravagant, and loving time. “I was the only child at that time so I think I was also very precious to my mom. My family, my neighbors, and all of my mom’s friends were all over me at that time. They were all loving and they would all take good care of me. I was always the center of attention.”
“I was raised by my grandparents, so I didn’t go in the yard that much but I used to hang around the house. I did this weird thing that I remember as ‘my favorite activity’. I used to crawl under my grandmother’s bed to dig a hole in the wall. Every day, I would disappear for one hour or something and my grandma wouldn’t pay too much attention. I used to steal a spoon from the kitchen, crawl under the bed, and dig a hole. My grandma followed me one day and she saw under her bed all of this dirt. I was almost on the other side by that point. I would wiggle my fingers there.” Nini described it as a ‘prison breakthrough’ activity before it became mainstream with all of the movies.
Nini talked about the night-time routine with her mom as a precious memory for her. “I remember me and my mom used to sleep in the same bed and every night she used to put on the audio story tales that my stepdad brought us. I remember loving to listen to those (story tales), laying in the bed, waiting for my mom getting ready for the night time.”
“I think our childhood was much more bittersweet”
Nini talked about our childhood being totally different from what kids have today. “I didn’t have a phone at all. Plus, in my childhood, we had that period of having no electricity. It was a period of time when Georgia was becoming a more independent state: the government was changing, there was a revolution, and there was all this drama happening. Wherever we had no electricity, we used candles. I used to take candle wax and put it on my fingernails and pretend that I had the longest nails.” Kids today also haven’t experienced all of the 90’s things that we used to have. “Nowadays the feeling of going in the yard, playing too much and your parents calling you up from the balcony like ‘Nini, come upstairs’ is non-existent as well”.
“I think this childhood, that they have, is the time when they have all of the sources to get more knowledge. My brother can be looking at the phone and he knows everything about the space, that I didn’t have an idea of when I was his age.”
Luka described his childhood as an interesting time growing up in a house full of musicians. “My mother is the conductor of the choir, my aunt works in that choir too and my uncle is another conductor of the same choir, and another aunt as well, and my brother is a rapper. So, only my dad is a non-musician person, he is a scientist. Every time we would gather for a birthday or a wedding, my mother would be over the piano and a bunch of people would be around her singing.”
“Can you imagine, I’ve never had toys in my childhood? And my favorite activity was drawing figures on the paper and cutting them out. I had all of the characters of all of the animations on paper. I would cut them out, gather them in a bag, and I would then hide them under a big box. When my parents were out and I was alone, I was making some voiceovers with these paper characters and playing with them.” Luka said that he was hiding his paper characters as he didn’t want his parents to think that he was rather a strange kid.
“I was also inclined towards JMC [at that early age] if you can imagine it. I would grab a deodorant or a perfume bottle, stand in front of the mirror, and act as if I was a journalist. Then I switched to being a talk-show host. I had a huge table in my living room, so I would sit in the middle and have 2 chairs to the right and 2 chairs to the left with a teddy bear, dragon, and other toys around me as the audience. I would host a talk-show, discuss politics, and culture. This is when I understood that journalism was for me.”
“We were dreaming for iPhones and now I am holding an iPhone in my hand”
Luka talked about his precious memories from that time being connected to people gathering together in the house. “I was actually a bit bored of that and I thought that people did it in every family like that in Georgia. But when I came to Bulgaria and I started studying, I realized that it was a very particular thing that I experienced in our culture. I cherish that the most as I felt that it was a part of being together, being close to each other as a community.”
“We didn’t have smartphones, obviously, and social media was not so popular. I remember I didn’t even have a computer in my house, so I was playing Mario on my father’s laptop in his office. He would take me to his workplace over the weekend, and he would do something on his computer, and I would play Mario on another one.” Luka described life now being more lenient and chill for kids. “We were dreaming for iPhones and now I am holding an iPhone in my hand. Things that seemed pretty luxurious now are just ordinary gadgets. And I still remember when we didn’t have electricity and we had just candles in the darkness. It was pretty intimate. We were gathering with neighbors in the house. Now if the electricity goes off, we complain. But back then, we would just digest these moments as something ordinary.”
Maria described her childhood being full of happy memories connected to her family. “I think I was a very happy child as I had a full family, sister, and we spent a lot of time together. We traveled a lot. We had a nice quality time as well. It’s not like we were sitting in front of the TV every weekend.”
“As a child, I loved traveling especially going on adventures. We would go to the mountains together. We went kayaking and we were sleeping in tents together. We were cooking on a campfire. I think I had one of the best childhood summer memories from that time. And I met one of my best friends during that traveling because as you spend a lot of time traveling with people it helps to build a stronger connection.” Maria described kayaking in the Volgograd region as one of these special adventures that she had. “We had 4–3 kayaks, we had tents, and we had to cook for our team while traveling around.”
Maria also has a favorite childhood activity. “I was playing like I was a librarian and I had lots of tickets to issue for the books that were just leaves from the tree. So, I would give my toys a leaf and they would exchange it for the book. Whenever my toy was done with reading a book, which was within 5 seconds, we would exchange it again.”
“It is just a really nice picture that I have in my head: all of us sitting around the table, with candles, and we are laughing”
Precious memories for Maria connected back to people that she spent a lot of quality time with. “We played monopoly game together with my family. We had power shut down one day and we had to lite the candles. As the TV was off, we couldn’t watch anything and we decided to play monopoly. There were candles around, we were laughing. My dad was the bank owner, obviously, and he won at the end as we expected. He knew most of the rules so he knew how to cheat a little in the game. And we were all 4 of us together: my mom, my dad, my sister, and I. It is just a really nice picture that I have in my head: all of us sitting around the table, with candles, and we are laughing. It was also kind of scary and you wanted to rely on someone more experienced. And then you see your parents behaving like heroes. Your parents know what to do in an extreme situation when there is no light and even make it nice and home-like.”
Maria talked about the difference between our generation and the new one being rather not drastic. “When I was a child we already had a TV, my dad had a computer, and it is not like it was that different as nowadays. It wasn’t that much different but we still had a lot of quality time with each other; we play the games, we traveled a lot, or we would always go for a walk all together.”
As kids of crazy 90s, we could tell you a lot of wishes for the future or what we wish kids would do today but the most important wishes are the wishes for our kids. Wishes to our kids would always come from the heart and would be the most honest.
Olena — “I would try not to give my children a lot of time on the computer or the phone. Of course, most of the parents do that as they are too busy. I will try to make it more active for the children so they would also have some memories to share.”
Nini — “I would tell them (my kids) to live in the moment, enjoy childhood, and not to grow up too fast. It might sound cliché, but you are a child once for a very short period of time and you have to enjoy it as much as you can. I wish they would have a fun life without being judged.”
Luka — “I wish they (my kids) would be creative. I wish they would do something creative, something not typical that a kid would do. If smartphones are still a thing in the future, I hope kids would not binge watch something on their phones but do something that’s not given.”
Maria — “What I really would love for my kids to do is to go outside more and spend some quality time with friends. They could travel to the mountains, travel to the seaside, and connect more with nature.”
