June 10th, 2024

I heard Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose” this morning while running errands and I was taken straight back to the summer of 1995.

As I considered my own power, my pleasure, my pain, I daydreamt about what I would be doing then. I had just turned ten years old.

I would probably wake up and check the mailbox for the newest issue of Disney Adventures, Nintendo Power, or Nickelodeon Magazine (or beg my mom with moon-sized eyes to drive me to the store so I could raid the newsstand). I’d find a shady spot in the yard, crack a straw into an ice-cold Pacific Cooler Capri Sun (my other go-to summer drink, Orbitz, wouldn’t exist for another year), and read a few articles and comic strips until my imagination took over, a habit of mine I’m still unable to shake.

I was probably wearing something with a character I loved on it (like Wolverine here), or a No Fear t-shirt, which was a bold-faced lie I wore while riding my Redline BMX bike any- and everywhere (I was and still am terrified of jumps but can do a mean bunny hop). JNCO jeans and Airwalks were, too, still a few years away.

If it was a Saturday morning, I would have poured myself a bowl of Captain Crunch or Reese’s Puffs and watched some of my favorite TV shows: Alvin & the Chipmunks, Animaniacs, Batman, Beetlejuice, Biker Mice From Mars, Dennis the Menace, Garfield & Friends, Ghostbusters, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, ReBoot, Sonic the Hedgehog, Spider-Man, Street Sharks, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Tick, Tiny Toons Adventures, X-Men (and if you’re thinking there’s no way I watched all of these then you underestimate the member of the family who had to learn how to operate all the electronics, including the VCRs).

I was allowed a lot of freedom as a kid, and with that independence I biked (and sometimes rollerbladed and often walked) through every street, trail, and secret back alley in Faribault; I know that town better than I will probably ever know any other. For a few summers around that time, I also roamed the woods of East Bethel with my friends, running around and making our own stories with wild creativity, retreating to their house when the sun went down to drink milk (with ice) and play Super Nintendo in the precious air-conditioning (we didn’t have cold air [or a shower head] growing up).

Select evenings of my youth were often spent bathed in the glow of a movie theater or television. If it was a Friday night, my family would sit down and watch TGIF; if it was Saturday, it was SNICK; if it was a Sunday night, we’d laugh together during America’s Funniest Home Videos and The Simpsons and I would be absolutely scared silly by Unsolved Mysteries and The X-Files. If I could keep my eyes open that late, I’d catch SNL the night before or one of the syndicated shows that lit up my soul, like Star Trek: TNG or Tales From The Crypt.

I was also very cultured and loved to read (I lived just two blocks away from the library), and I was probably engaging in the pinnacle of culture then: Goosebumps. I would peel open some Dunkaroos or a Handi-Snack, pour myself a glass of Kool-Aid (which was half as sweet as other households, per my mother’s method of making it), and be transported to a literary world just scary enough for a ten-year-old who liked to lie awake at night and question the nature of his existence. Some of my earliest writing was for a series I created called Shivers, because I was nothing if not an original, clever little boy.

As Seal sang, I remembered the feeling of the heat, the bursts of public A.C., the long days that I now know were far too short, the sleepovers, the early mornings, the crushes, the smells and the tastes, the malls, the music, the extreme everything of the 90’s, the joy and fear and comfort and pain and anxiety of growing up.

I also remember seeing Batman Forever (the film whose soundtrack introduced “Rose” to American audiences) and loving it, revealing a core attitude that really can find the best in the absolute worst.

I hope you have a great summer. Never change!