2009: School Days [The Best of 2000s Nostalgia – Throwback]

Author note: I was sitting at home one day reminiscing about all of the 2000s nostalgia I remember from my school days, my favourite year being 2009. I don’t know what it was about this time period but it will always be special to me.

With the sound of old songs and the scent of Impulse – True Love, I am transported back to those days. Back to the days where the walks to school seemed to always either be crisp winter mornings or the cool before the rising heat of a summers day. Those days were times where the only tough decision to make was not dating the ‘wrong’ person or whether to like or comment on someone’s photo on the early days of Facebook. At that point, we were all still getting over the creative outlet that was Bebo with our favourite songs playing over profiles filled with things like ’23 things about me before I sleep’ and checkerboard style themes.

School lessons passed by in a blur but there are always some I look back on with a smile. Sex education was a bizarre opportunity to watch your best friend put a condom on a plastic penis while wearing drunk goggles. We laughed so much we almost peed. That being said, I think that class revealed a lot about some people – who was genuine and who was just going through life for the cheap thrills. PE class was girls bitching at each other in the changing rooms about the length of skirts, the height of socks and whether we shaved or waxed our legs. On swimming days, the boys would line up against the glass wall that looked into the pool from the school corridor. Girls would either fight to cover up or not give a shit, I guess your reaction depended on the type of person you were.

The ‘Den’ was where sixth formers would go for a fag. It was a place at the edge of the school grounds where the trees grew in densely so nobody could really see in from the outside. It provided the perfect opportunity to hide from both teachers and other students (the students who believed they were ‘too cool’ to go down there). For those who didn’t smoke, the Den provided the privacy needed to steal kisses with your love interest of the time.

Besides this, our lessons were a fashion show of ties so short and chunky we swore we’d never get away with it – we almost always did – and sweeping fringe,s straightener burned until they were basically dead, then glued with ‘freeze spray’. Hell, some people would even straighten their hair at the back of class while many of the boys would pull out a jar of ‘putty’ for a quick restyle when the teacher wasn’t looking. Our make up of choice was Dream Matte Mousse with black eyeliner on our waterlines and sticky lipgloss adorning our mouths.

iPods were still a new thing with only the select few owning an iPod Touch, the rest of us were blasting DJ Cammy on our old LG Cookie or Sony Ericsson. Wireless headphones weren’t a thing so you’d always see someone trying to intricately weave their headphone cable through their shirt buttonholes and around their tie. At the time, we all acted like these days would never end but, years on, we enjoy fleeting moments of simpler days, only facilitated by an overplayed melody from our school days in 2009.

What’s Your Favourite Piece of 2000s Nostalgia?

Do you have fond memories of this time period? Was 2009 a good year for you? How were your school days different to mine? Let me know in the comments!