(More relevant as a mid-October post, but who’s keeping track)

When millennials were the youngest generation, we unknowingly created the ‘nostalgia industry’ (and later, Covid would bastardized it.) It was fun at first, but now it’s really annoying to see the actor of a side character of a show from your youth try to squeeze out all and any relevance. I was just fine with the occasional Google search to see what they’ve been up to whenever they happened to pop into my head. Now reunions and reboots are nothing special because the industry has caught on and exploited any feelings of nostalgia.

What recently threw me through a loop was seeing a TikTok of a girl in her early twenties (at most) wearing a Bobby Jack t-shirt. The first thing that came to mind was that overused internet joke, there are two kinds of people…: one who loves to express their ‘inner child’ by wearing clothes and accessories from when they were a child, and those who can’t fathom doing so. I’m okay with getting the occasional ‘Things From the 90s/00s You Forgot About’ post, but wearing the same clothes or having the same room decor as my middle school self does not appeal to me at all. When I saw that Bobby Jack shirt, I had a clear memory of my six-grade self who was excited to have her own locker so she could hang up the BJ ads from her M and J-14 magazines. I was the girl who could experience joy so easily by just wearing her favorite clothes or by experiencing her new-found love of just staring images online for hours on end, thanks to the now widespread internet. But that girl does not exist anymore and digging up or buying new iterations of her old favorite things feels wrong. I definitely do things for the sake of my ‘inner child’, but nothing that’s ever decade-specific or something that has died since I grew up and was now resurrected due to capitalism.

I fucking loved Bobby Jack. I loved monkeys in general (that was my thing), and the cute-and-sassy combo, smooth vector lines, and saturated colors of Bobby Jack was everything I could ever want if I knew how to put it into words. I recently threw out a bunch of my old clothes, and I thought it was a good thing since I tend to hold on to anything that once made me happy. I had some pressure from my family to throw everything out, so I did… but I also took pictures of everything beforehand. There was only one Bobby Jack shirt (zip up hoodie, technically) in the bunch, and I can’t find it or any of the other shirts I remember wearing anywhere online. How many pieces undocumented Bobby Jack appeal are there?? (I was also resentful that I saw them being labelled as vintage and a bit disturbed when I saw someone selling a pair of girl’s underwear.)

I’m so emotionally fucked up that I’m not going to post the pictures of my Bobby Jack hoodie. It feels too personal. What if the pictures start to circulate since it’s the only image of that hoodie? Great for archival purposes, but that was my favorite thing to wear and clothes were a big part of identity back then. I don’t want a part me to be out there out of my control. I want my memories to stay my memories and stay special and unique to me. No one can understand or appreciate how I felt or who I was back then except myself.

I’m already (more) emotionally on edge because of Palestine and everyone online… I can’t start this because then I will rant and rage and it does no good. (Actually, isn’t it good to rant and rage to get your feelings out?) Everything has been terrible for everyone, and it will be the Palestinians who will continue to suffer as the oppressed people.