One of the most powerful and important trends is hair style. Hair styles are constantly changing, and many people will do anything they can to keep up with the trend. I can remember early in elementary school when one of the coolest ways to wear your hair was in a bull cut. This made your hair look like a mushroom or a thimble yet was surprisingly popular. I am cursed with hair that is unable to move unless it is hit with a stick, so I was unable to participate in this awesome trend. But perhaps this was a good thing.

  A few years later, more and more boys transitioned into shorter hair with the front part sticking up, with the help of countless bottles of gel and hours of hair sculpting. About 60 percent of my third and fourth grade classes had spiked hair in the front and kids would invent excuses every day to escape to the bathroom and smother their heads with their favorite gel. Once again, I was saved from experimenting with this trend because of my brick hair. I can’t exactly remember why hair that was formed to look like a motocross ramp was so appealing, but there was no doubt that it was popular.

  Shortly after the ramp hair came the craze with frosted tips and bleaching. One fall when I returned to school it seemed as though every boy in the entire school became blonde. Or half blonde. Or just a little blonde in the front. It got out of control. I began to become suspicious of every blonde person in the metro area, thinking them to be imposters rather than naturally blonde people. Not surprisingly, this trend died out after a few years and hair style has become relatively normal for the most part. For now at least.

 Music has also been an ever-changing part of pop culture. The first hugely popular band that I can remember was N*SYNC. They exploded onto the music scene with their enthusiastic synchronized dancing and poorly spiked hair. People will tell you they never owned an N*SYNC album, but they are surely lying.  Not only did most of my friends listen to them on the radio but they got the fan gear; T-shirts, water bottles, watches, N*SYNC Frosted Tips Cereal, you name it. I even celebrated Christmas with N*SYNC, making the entire family sit through An N*SYNC Christmas next to the fireplace while my dad searched for any opportunity to throw the CD into the fire.

  As I entered middle school, a new band caught wildfire. That band, unfortunately, was Fallout Boy. With their nonsense lyrics and 5-sentence-long song titles, they rocked their way into the hearts of every middle school girl in Omaha. I remember days of hearing “Sugar We’re Goin Down Swingin,” played eight times in a row on the radio and school dances that seemed to feature only Fallout Boy music. Thankfully, the popularity of this band seemed to wane after a few years and for a while all seemed well in the music world. But I should have known better than that. In the past year, the world has become addicted to a bunch of leather-wearing tough guys called the Jonas Brothers. When someone says the words “talented” or “legends,” I’m sure the Jonas Brothers are the first thing to come to mind. I don’t believe I have enough room in this column to share what I really think about the Jonas Brothers, so I won’t even try.

 Another defining part of pop culture today is the TV shows. Growing up I enjoyed watching everything on Nickelodeon. Shows like Doug, Legends of the HiddenTemple and Kenan and Kell were the best on TV. In third and fourth grade my favorite show was Dragon Ball Z, and I became addicted to watching it and discussing the episodes with my classmates. Usually the episodes would have two characters just talking trash to each other 50 meters apart and then it would end and give a preview of the next day’s episode (which usually showed the same two characters continuing to talk trash with no sign of any action happening).

  Another favorite of mine in elementary was Even Stevens. There never has or never will be a Disney Channel show of higher quality than Even Stevens and I’m sure I would still watch it if it was running. These days the most popular TV shows for high school students are comedies like Scrubs, 30 Rock, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia or The Office. These are all entertaining shows and I am thankful that I get to watch more mature shows these days rather than the bush league shows my little brother subjects himself to like The Suite Life of Zach and Cody. There is nothing Suite about that show or their lives either.

 There are two things I remember most in my life as being amazingly popular though. The first, of course, is Pokemon. I still can’t remember why I liked Pokemon, but there is no doubt that I did. I wasted tons of potential candy money on these Pokemon cards that had pictures of imaginary creatures that were supposed to fight each other and evolve into even less believable creatures. And if these cards were shiny, they were more valuable. My friends and I would spend huge amounts of money on these cards, all so that we could trade them at recess or lay them down on a mat and pretend to have a strategy in dueling each other.

 The second of these two fads was Harry Potter. Harry Potter was the most popular book around with me and my friends. It still is, sadly. I even play on a basketball team called Gryffindor. Kids started actually reading so they could learn about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named or read through paragraphs of Harry complaining about how painful his scar was. But Harry Potter, in the end, was awesome. Call me unrealistic, but there was something about the idea of traveling by portkey or calling my parents muggles that really made an impact on me.   

 These are all just parts of the ever changing culture we are a part of. These days, trends change faster and faster as new technologies are created. Eighteen years from now, I can’t imagine all the changes that will have taken place, I just hope that the Jonas Brothers aren’t still around.