When happiness is in fashion (fleetingly)

Even Jared Leto would tap that double denim delight 

This recent 90's revival is doing funny things to me, first I left my house in full blown double denim and felt smug about it, then I found myself seeking out No doubt songs, or Nsync until eventually I had an entire night going through a back catalogue of all the stuff I used to listen to when I still day dreamed about my school crush Steven Huggins or Mark Owen, who some said Steven looked like. Sighs. Guys, I was singing along to Emotions by Mariah Carey. Well, I say 'singing'...who can actually 'sing' along to that song? 

Look Millennials and all the potential men I am likely to date (you gotta look down when you hit your 30's and discover everyone your own age is married), this post just isn't for you, you're not going to understand a word I say from this point in and I won't throw in a single Harry Potter quote #TEAMROALDDAHL. So you might as well just go and invent an app that matches denim with other denim shades whilst the adults have a little trip down memory lane. Off you go now, scoot. 

Whilst staring at the almost full moon, I listened to, in no particular order, No Doubt, Nsync, Backstreet Boys, All 4 One (I swear - obvs), Boyz II Men, Take That (old school, 90's style), Mariah Carey and Jewel. And do you know what? I was happy. 

I was happy the way I used to be back in 1995 when Steven Huggins would come and talk to me at lunchtime. Advice to any teenagers still reading (seriously there won't be a single Potter quote, not one), if you are to have a school crush make him be three years older so that you can't actually date him (if he dates you, judge him, judge him harshly, you are too young) and make sure he is the kind of crush who will go out of his way to talk to you because he knows you have a crush on him. The kind of guy who enjoys the flattery of your crush and will indulge it but never, ever act on it. This is the perfect kind. It means you have so much material for the letters you will pass under the desk to your best friend during French. Guys if you're still doing French at school, don't bother, if you ever go to France they will pretend not to understand your perfectly acceptable attempt at their language and talk to you in English anyway - so fuck them and their pretty sounding words, send notes to your friends instead. 

Send notes about whomever you are crushing on, then go home and listen to, I guess One Direction(?) or Taylor Swift whilst flip-flopping between daydreams of said crush or marriage to Harry or Liam or whatever the other ones are called and be happy. Be really, really happy. 

Because the next time you get to be that happy again is basically when the decade in which you were a teenager comes back to haunt you when you're way past your best and no where close to the day dream version of yourself of yore. In fact your future husband, Mark Owen, is now in the real future and not married to you, thank God because he looks like someone’s old Aunt Mildred, all Paul McCartney loose jowls and sex-addict apologetic for sleeping with every moving female that got within arm distance of him (which is close because he is tiny). 

They all turn out this way, boy band crushes, school crushes, the people you were convinced were definitely going to be the love of your life and would cry buckets over because LIFE IS SO UNFAIR WHY IS HE GOING OUT WITH LISA CHALKLEY? Because she is his age and stunning - shut up Hannah. You'll feel differently when he breaks her heart in a few years time...just you wait. 

With the exception of Jared Leto, your crush only has one trajectory; down. He'll get fat, spotty and greasy, or Aunt Mildred-y like Mark Owen and he'll either go on to be a drug addicted waster with ten kids by different Mum's or a sex-addicted alcoholic or worse, like actual Paul McCartney, a jowly vegetarian. Never trust a vegetarian. Don't even talk to Vegans. Jason Orange I am looking right at you. 

Can you imagine how Cameron Diaz feels now? She dumped Jared Leto, dumped him. And not only has he been preserved in some kind of special vegan diet (it's okay to talk to Vegans when they are Jared Leto) but even though the 90's ended and took his TV show with it, all the things you might expect to have happened to Jordan Catalano in My So Called Life didn't, he just simply put the 90's in his pocket and kept walking until the only part of the 90's that still existed was Jared Leto, and now, now the 90's are back and there he is, all perfect hair and face, a cool as fuck rockstar who eats healthy and smiles. Jesus. Poor Cameron, she married one of Good Charlotte who even in this new 90's revival still aren't cool and whilst her ex has won an Oscar, the closest she’s ever come to an Oscar is sleeping with Oscar winning Jared Leto before he was Oscar winning. It’s enough to make me want to cry for her, thinking about Cameron has almost knocked me off my 90’s-when-Britney-had-the-best-abs-in-the-World high. Which, whilst we're on the subject, are BACK. Yep, go on Instagram, even Britney's abs have come back to celebrate the 90's revival. 

Back in the early 00's my sister, my nemesis, Steven Huggins real life ex-girlfriend Lisa, and me were invited back to Jared Leto's hotel by Jared Leto's no-where-near-as-cool brother Shannon: we said no. WE SAID NO. So, Cameron, we get it...damn, we get it. 

But she was right, of course, she acted on instinct, everything was screaming at her that he would become a Paul McCartney; of course, he had to. In the future, science will carry out tests on single pieces of Jared Leto's hair to work out how he managed to be so perfect regardless of decade, age and veganism. 

He is a miracle; I would put money on it that your crush won't be. Although...maybe Harry, I mean, it's the hair, the hair is a big sell, like Jordan Catalano before him, he could be a candidate for staying exactly the same regardless of decade. Time will tell, invest wisely teen crushees, forget Zayn; he'll be in rehab in five years max. 

I mean, I digress, but who wouldn't at the mere mention of Jared Leto? I mean, please. All these memories and the music and the Jessie from Saved by the Bell Mum jeans and denim shirt style that I have been rocking has got me all happy. Happy the way we can only be when we are teenagers. Yes, I do mean happy in a way that is permanently miserable and or angry. But that was happy. That was blissfully happy, the worst thing that happened is the school dick head picked on you for being ginger and I can tell any of you suffering this now (I’m really not going to quote Potter, why are you still reading?), that guy will be dead at 23 from a drug overdose, or jobless and fat, or who even cares, he'll be nowhere you want to be so forget him. Look, Ed Sheeran got rejected by music industry school bullies who thought he was supposed to be prettier and that man is getting laid as many times a week as he damn well wants. So whatever sadness you feel about the crush who you can't have, or the fact that Harry Styles isn't single (don't panic - he probably is or if he isn't he will be and then he'll be a sex pest like Mark Owen and you won't care for him anymore), forget it all because this is as happy as you will ever be. 

Later when happiness visits it will be so damn fleeting and unstable and full of other considerations that you will look back at your school years with longing. And then, bonus, they'll be in fashion and you'll find yourself crying with happiness for all the memories and the fact you didn't ever give up hope that double denim would be back. But then, as soon as it comes back, it will go again and the only constant certainty you will ever know is that no matter what decade and what age, Jared Leto will always be cool.