9 Rigorous Ways You Know You Went to School in the ’90s, by Zack Bornstein

1. You remember that you did.

Memory serves as a bank of perceptual information. Neural stimuli built up throughout years of schooling can provide sufficient evidence that you attended school in the 1990s. This confirmation method can be disregarded in cases of prolonged hypnosis, brainwashing, drug abuse, head trauma, electroconvulsive therapy, neuropsychiatric disease, and/or if you have ever entered an extended fugue state.

2. You are told explicitly by a trusted person.

Trusted people could include your parents, siblings, mentors, the President, or a longtime friend. Asking the person to repeat him or herself, or to put the statement in writing reduces the possibility of an auditory hallucination. You must further confirm that 1) the statement was not preceded by a clause like “as if” or “you did not”; and 2) that you were not in a play or improv scene where lying is commonly accepted, even from trusted persons.

3. You look up your name in the school’s database.

Schools maintain extensive records, including those of your attendance, grades, emergency contact, Social Security number, and allergies. In special cases, schools display examples of your artwork on their walls. Furthermore, digital records became commonplace in the 1990s when you allegedly attended school, so you can easily request this information if you can provide adequate proof of your identity.

4. You are frequently approached by passerbys with known details of your school life.

Former classmates that you bump into sporadically allude to details specific to your life, such as: your name, class year between 1990 and 1999, specific physical characteristics that have changed over the years, or stories that include you. This can be disregarded as statistical happenstance if you look like an individual that attended the same school, or if you have a twin sibling of which your classmates were unaware.

5. You have a customized class ring, graduation robe.

These items are costly and difficult to obtain if you did not attend the school in question, and therefore can serve as reliable indicators of attendance. However, such merchandise could have been gifted, stolen, or inherited from a person that attended such school in 1990s. Proceed with caution when using this classification if you have deceased relatives who attended school in the 1990s or if you are a petty thief.

6. You performed a notable deed and the school named the new gym after you.

Schools seek to highlight their alumni’s successes as they serve to boost the school’s brand and fame in a bid for better students, increased funding, and a greater sense of self-worth. If and only if you have not donated to the school such that the only reason for naming is due to your previous attendance, then you can reasonably conclude that you went to such school. Confounding variables for this method include: 1) if you are notable person living in the community the school is based or 2) if you are or have ever been President. 

7. You did not go to school in the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, 2000s, or 2010s, but you are educated.

Process of elimination.

8. You once ditched school to see the 1999 film Detroit Rock City in theaters.

Distributors New Line Cinema and Alliance Video only released this film theatrically in the 1990s, so if you had to leave school to see the musical comedy in theaters, ipso facto, you attended school in the 1990s. This is also true if you ditched school to see Bride of Chucky, Bulworth, and/or Dogma, featuring Jay and Silent Bob.

9. Come on, seriously?

Why are you even consulting the Internet on this one? Get a grip. There are four wars going on and something so sinister is happening right now in the Congo that it would make you hurl just thinking about it. Do something. Take some responsibility, you waste of organs. How the fuck did 300 million years of evolution culminate in you, you piece of shit? Wanna know how you know you went to school in the 1990s, you privileged nothing? Because you’re reading fluff pieces on the internet at a high paying job and texting two different fuck-buddies pictures of your butt. Bah!

Zack Bornstein is a Brooklyn-based comedian and filmmaker born in Seattle. He’s worked with The Late Show with David Letterman, MTV Networks, Conde Nast, Tribeca Films, Maker Studios, Animal Planet, UCB, and more. His work has been featured on Today, Good Morning America, VH1, MTV, Bravo, USA Today, Tosh.0, HuffPo, Buzzfeed, and College Humor. He writes/directs/produces for Garlic Jackson, which the New York Times called “some of the City’s best writers and performers.” Follow him @ZackBornstein for awful goodies.

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9 Rigorous Ways You Know You Went to School in the […]