Back to Y2K: Are We Okay?

It scares me to see the early aughts resurface, not because of the baggy jeans and crossbody bags, but that I will have to relive this era of unabashed mediocrity and self-satisfied violence

90skabaklaan

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Yes, time is but an ouroboros eating its tail – but isn’t it weird to see 2000s fashion suddenly make a comeback? I was walking the other day and saw a girl with a crossbody bag strapped across her chest, marching ahead of me on the same street, radiating a don’t-fuck-with-me-I-have-a-crossbody-bag vibe.

It reminded me of a time in senior high school. One rainy afternoon, as we were leaving class, my classmate Mabel slung her grey Bench crossbody bag around her. The color sharply contrasted with our school uniform’s red plaid skirt. She had a wiry bob and a sassy attitude, and she seemed the type who’d cut people with a razor blade if they ever crossed her. Her demeanor was the butchier version of her best friend Lyn, who had swollen red lips that would've appeared like a botched filler job nowadays except they were natural (I think). She also had the cackle of sailors who had one drink too many.

I’m now second-guessing whether we were actually leaving class or if they had decided to skip it as usual. Sometimes, they would sneak to the narrow dirt alley behind our classroom and jump over the concrete wall. Another option was to quickly exit the front gate without raising the security guard’s suspicion. Students needed a special gate pass to leave school before 5 pm, and the gate pass only allowed you to get out for an hour to have lunch—the privilege was often reserved for those who lived near school, like me.

Mabel wasn’t my friend, nor was Lyn, although they were very friendly during exam time because they depended on us to give them answers when the teacher wasn’t paying attention. The nerds were useful for two things: helping the cool kids pass their tests and being the target of their jokes when it wasn’t exam season. As a young boy, I thought this was unfair, and I swore that one day I would succeed in my life and become their boss so I could show them that there is justice in the world. I would later realize how naive this was because guess what, there were also other bullies in the workplace.

The early aughts were a vibe that, at the time, I just couldn’t vibe with. There I was, with my mom-approved fits, in a sea of hormonal pubescent boys and girls in their FUBU baggy workwear pants and oversized button-down shirts with dragons and Chinese characters on them, paired with Oakley shades or those rounded Matrix sunglasses that made people look like they had beads for eyes.

The popular kids all had parents who worked in the US and they drank during the weekends listening to “Westside” by TQ, screaming “Westside ‘til I die”. The boys would imagine they were gangsters out to pop a cap on someone’s knee while the girls were hooking up with our school’s basketball varsity players (and later on worrying where to get morning-after pills.)

They would blast Limp Bizkit, imagining themselves as Fred Durst archetypes flipping a finger at society, which they believed was set up to ruin their game. When you’re young, you feel the whole world is against you. Didn’t get that latest phone? The world is against you. Your parents didn’t let you go to that house party? The world is against you. Your teacher suspended you for bringing cigarettes to school? You’re the victim, no doubt about it: the world is scheming to destroy your life.

We never truly understood our power over the cool kids, drudgingly playing our role in the pecking order without challenging why we were at the bottom. Around this time, I transformed from being a chubby kid to a gangly, bespectacled teenager with undiagnosed hyperthyroidism. I was constantly oscillating between anger, awkwardness, and annoyance, tired of being pushed around and called names every day. I just really wanted high school to be over.

Recently, one of my batchmates created a message group to organize our high school reunion, and I ended up checking out my bullies’ social media profiles. Their feeds are filled with the same crass jokes they used to crack in school. It scares me to see the early aughts resurface, not because of the baggy jeans and crossbody bags, but this nauseating feeling that I will have to relive this era of unabashed mediocrity and self-satisfied violence. The only good thing is that, this time, I’m not as powerless as I was as a teenager.