Pursuing 1990's Trivia

Whatever happened to the nineties, as in the 1990’s? There’s a Trivial Pursuit game with questions just from that decade that I and some relatives played this evening after dinner. Our ages ranged from 5 to 57, and none of us knew any of the answers. We made a couple of lucky guesses, and with a few gimmes we were finally able to end the game, but not without a struggle. It didn’t help that one of the players was from Italy.

The 90’s were a blur to all of us. Of course, to base a whole board game on trivia questions from one decade meant that the questions were somewhat obscure. On each of those little cards, there are six questions, and there must be a hundred cards with the game, or more, so that’s 600 facts about the 90’s. 600 things didn’t even happen in the 90’s, so some of those questions may have been made up. We certainly wouldn’t have known the difference.

I was buried under small children in the 90’s, so the big news of most of my days was who had hit whom and how it allegedly started and why that was a lie because it really started this way. The only music I had in my car were kids songs with lyrics like, “Riding along, ding dong, I see a cow – you do? Oh wow.” If these songs weren’t on in the car, then the fighting escalated. The soothing sounds of stupid lyrics had a calming effect on my children.

At home the TV had Rugrats on or nothing at all. I couldn’t watch news because of the violence, and I couldn’t watch sitcoms because of the sex. My husband and I had to sneak and watch this stuff in the bedroom – like it was some kind of news porn. I could have read the paper, but when you have young children, all the doom and gloom in the world is frightening. It also makes you feel guilty. How could you bring innocents into the world with wars, scandals, natural disasters, airline crashes, and the Back Street Boys?

So I missed all the music, all the news, all the actors – the only movies I saw were animated – everything that might have made the 90’s a decade to remember.

I liked the Trivia of the 60’s and 70’s because there was so much going on. The music was outstanding – my daughter and her friends know all the words to so many of the songs from then, which always surprises me. I didn’t know any songs from my parents’ generation, despite their protests that the likes of Lawrence Welk was good listening.

After playing tonight I don’t actually feel that bad. I know if there were a Trivial Pursuit game for moms of the 90’s, I’d beat everyone. I know all about Chucky’s fears on Rugrats, Mufasa’s demise in “The Lion King,” what kinds of animals Milo and Otis were (and their genders), and how Chance, Sassy, and Shadow made it home in “Homeward Bound.” So heads-up, Trivial Pursuit. If you want me to win, throw out some of those questions, such as, “What year did the Back Street Boys break up?” (which I just made up – although this would be a typical question) and ask stuff like, “What was the heroine’s name in Beauty and the Beast?” That kind of trivia would make me feel like a winner rather than some vacant headed bimbo. Shame on you.