Today I woke up to 11 emails from work. 11.* Inevitably thoughts and feelings yearned for a simpler time. A time when I was young (er) and worried only about school, or rather the trials and tribulations other young people in school. Why and when did my life stop being all about Zack, Kelly, Screech; neon cycling shorts, sweet valley high and Polly pockets ? (probably merging various nostalgia from my 90s youth there)
Saved by the Bell was many things to many people, but for me it was all about the nauseating clothes; the rad dialogue; um, the fact Zack SPOKE to me camera AND could freeze time! what the ?!. Even the buffoonish Principle, Mr Belding was a welcomed assurance of laughter, moral reflection and tepid social issues in every episode right up to the College Years.
I loved this show, I feel like it was always on. You know when you were younger and everything just kind of appeared?. There was no start, just the memory of its painful end. Well Saved By the Bell was like that for me. I was born into it – ok a bit of an exaggeration, but what I mean is I have no idea at what point I started watching it because it was always on. My sister is a few years older than me and usually I watched what she did (if I deemed it good enough obviously – harsh critic from a small age was I) and this was one of our weekend rituals. I can’t recite episodes but I can remember how I felt. A lot of it had to do with this guy:
look at that hair
I was in love with Zack (of course – I had a thing for blondes with bangs back then – Leo DiCaprio, Devon Sawa, Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Jason Donovan were my candy boys. Now they’re older, I’m older. Their hair isn’t half as amazing as it was and I don’t know the difference between the 90s and the naughties, I mean everything, in my mind, feels like it happened in the last decade not 20 years plus ! – that’s ridiculous time gone. That’s essentially enough time for someone to have been born right then and be in university, in a job… or even a parent themselves now. Ugh.
They did bring back Saved By The Bell: The New Class (the title said it all) and I don’t remember or care who was in it or even their names. Why? because I loved the old gang and I had grown up …to watch older, more serious kids, dealing with really serious stuff like the short-lived My So Called life or Dawson’s Creek and for the Aussie and English readers, Heartbreak High.
If everyday was like today – which it is, I find myself smiling upon a simpler time. Where thinking about Zack Morris being my boyfriend, and how long it would be before I ever turned 14, was my only problem. But some things are best being left back in the past, well for some us anyway:
This was clearly a depiction of Zacks awkward just-coming-out-of-puberty-turning-into-a-man stage…big mistake
*said work emails ironically kept me from posting this post earlier as planned.
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