185too!” But today I am happy. I prefer to play with my daughter than drink in a bar.
Friday night we order pizza, have some Coca Cola and watch a horror movie. I
simply got soft. But, it does not bother me in the slightest.
TV generationFor me the 1990s were the times of television. I loved watching the X Files, The
Outer Limits, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, The Simpsons, or Alf. We also used to
watch Dallas, Baywatch, Heartbreak High, Helen and the Boys... It is hardly a coin-
cidence that the main character of my book is addicted to watching TV. It was cool
when I would take one of the recorded movies and watch it on my grandpa’s VCR.
Poor grandpa had to watch Bruce Lee, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Jean-Claude Van Damme and other tough guys. Every now and then I would check
if grandpa was asleep. When he was on the verge of dozing off I would wake him
up: “Grandpa, don’t sleep, let’s watch this badass scene!” At my grandma’s I would
watch satellite cartoons. They were not broadcast in Czech and I understood noth-
ing, but it did not matter. From those times I remember tracksuits and leggings
that everyone hated. And Pedro chewing gum. I also remember my mountain bike
and the patches my mom sewed on the tracksuit sleeves and legs as I wanted to
look like a Native American.
I came cross Polish literature and movies when I was already an adult. As a kid
I liked the Polish cartoon Bolek and Lolek. I remember that in the 1990s people
used to go to Poland to shop, especially for clothes – my aunt was one of those.
I did not understand why she would choose Poland if one could buy everything
from the Vietnamese seller around the corner. It was only years later when reading
the Pocket Atlas of Women by Sylwia Chutnik that I learnt about Polish bazaars.
Then, at last, I got it.
From the early part of the 1990s I do not remember much about Nirvana but
I do remember the Kelly Family, Backstreet Boys, Lunetic and children’s discos
in the school gym. I also associate those times with horror books and movies. I
believe my first horror movie was A Nightmare on Elm Street. In turn in Cobain’s
Students there is a scene in which the narrator and his brother go to the movie
theatre to watch Alien. It is a true story: we were just kids then but the cashier let
us in anyway. A great experience...Cobain’s Students is often presented as a book
about the 1990s, which is not accurate as most stories there take place between
1999 and 2005. Hence, it is a book about the turn of the century.
How do I assess the changes that have taken place in human relations since that
time? Today a great deal of our lives is on social media, which is both positive and
Nothing has really changed, Miroslav Pech Poles and Czechs across generations