21 Things You Know About Life If You Graduated High School In 1999

1. Prince’s “1999” was obviously written so you’d have something to rock out to at homecoming, prom, and graduation.

2. It’s a serious privilege to be one of the chosen few who got to high-five friends and say, “Last class of the century—wait, millennium!”

3. But every life perk has its downside, and if you’d been born a year later you would have graduated in 2000, a number that turned out to be way more conducive to making cool, novelty sunglasses.  

4. Songs that inspire dances are especially great, but you’ll never feel as cool as you once did doing the Macarena.

5. Boy bands come and go, but Justin Timberlake is here to stay.

6. If you’re a pop star famous for sexing up the Catholic schoolgirl look in her debut music video, you probably shouldn’t bother with the virginity claims.

7. If you’re wealthy and/or famous enough, you can get away with murder—as long as there’s a glove that doesn’t quite fit.

8. But if you want to come off as innocent, fleeing in a white Ford Bronco is a bad PR move—for you, and the SUV that will have to be discontinued.

9. Also, it’s possible to be out-famed by your lawyer’s kids one day, especially if they have enough children with alliterative names, like OJ defense attorney Robert Kardashian’s Khloe, Kim, and Kourtney.

10. It’s also totally possible to fail as a pop starlette and then get famous for confusing tuna fish for chicken like Jessica Simpson (no relation to OJ) did.

11. As for the other OJ, turns out juice isn’t that good for you after all. Every time you water it down before feeding it to your kids as “a special treat,” you’ll have to wonder how many years you inadvertently shaved off your life just by pounding Tropicana Pure Premium every morning before school.

12. It’s hard not to feel a little sorry for yourself for going through childhood before people wised up about sugary beverages like Sunny D, Snapple, and Arizona Iced Tea. I mean, why didn’t they just funnel pounds of sugar straight into your mouth? On the upside, you missed being raised when people were told that cigarettes were healthy, so there’s that.

13. Plus, there’s something to be said about having the chance to snack on stuff like Hot Pockets and Pop Tarts instead of kale chips.

14. Kale is to spinach what a Ruffles potato chip is to the regular, non-ridged kind. Mostly, the rise of kale is evidence that no one can ever see an underdog coming.

15. In a similar vein, no one can predict when a beloved technological innovation like the CD becomes obsolete.

16. And it turns out that all those heated debates you had about whether the MP3 player or the mini disc would dominate the post CD landscape were a grand ol’ waste o time.

17. Nothing lasts forever—not even the concept of meeting up with friends to go shopping at actual physical stores, car phones, or Oprah’s daytime talk show.

18. But a reunion show and/or a tell-all memoir and/or a feature film based on your favorite hit television program is always inevitable. Even if two of the cast members are twin billionaire fashion moguls uninterested in participating, it’ll somehow happen.

19. Oh, and there’s always a chance that your weird looking toddler will blossom into a beautiful, badass fashion mogul like Mary-Kate or Ashley Olsen.

20. Since nostalgia is powerful, and good ideas are few and far between, you also know to expect yet more whack, updated versions of all the toys you played with growing up in the hands of kids over the coming years.

21. As much as you love the Internet, and you sometimes call yourself a millenial (because wikipedia says you are one, technically), it’s nice to remember the time before My Little Pony had a YouTube channel and a cool phone was cellular, not smart.