40 School Things You Forgot You Were Obsessed With in the 2000s

The year is 2001. You just got out of bed to the smell of Eggo waffles fresh out of the toaster oven. You stretch, yawn, check to make sure your tamagotchi is still alive (it isn't) and then head downstairs to get ready for the First! Day! Of! School! Your outfit? A sweater set, some bootcut jeans, and Adidas slides that you'll be pairing with white socks and a half-ponytail. Your school supplies? Organized in your shiny new Jansport backpack. And when I say "shiny," I mean dull olive green, obviously.

Anyway, yeah, I'll go ahead and let the rest of that fated morning play out in the privacy of your head (gonna assume an argument with your mom about the rise of your jeans happened at some point) and get to the point: This roundup of school things from the aughts you completely forgot dominated your life. Like...if you weren't getting accidentally high on a buncha fruit-flavored markers while pretending to understand your Texas Instruments calculator, were you even LIVING?! Answer: no.

Check out 40 items you may or may not have owned in the roaring aughts, some of which will only bring back fond memories and some of which are nightmarish triggers. Think: three-ring binders, paper hole protectors, and those little packets of pencil lead that would constantly break. Enjoy the harrowing trip down memory lane, where you literally hand-wrote your homework just to avoid the talking paper clip on Microsoft Word!