ten years (more or less) gone

I missed the 90’s. A good chunk of them, anyway. Mind you, I’m not saying that I wish it were the 1990’s again, only that I seemed to go AWOL during a big part of that decade. Most of that had to do with Beth, my first daughter, being born.

Back before Beth, I was tuned in to what was going on in the world. If you had asked me on any day before November 19, 1993, what was happening, I could have told you and given my opinion on it. Had I heard the latest news, seen the latest movie, listened to the latest album, kept up with the latest TV show? Yep. I was all over the early 1990’s. Ross Perot told us that the “giant sucking sound” we’d hear in the future was all the jobs going to Mexico. Bill Clinton and his saxophone. Saddam Hussein promised “the mother of all battles” in the first Persian Gulf War. Axl Rose had public tantrums every other week. It was cool to sport a mullet. Rosie O’Donnell was actually funny. Clint Eastwood shot up the bad guys in Unforgiven. Hannibal Lecter stared out at us through that mask. The Buffalo Bills lost the Super Bowl every year. Grunge and “alternative rock” were the Next Big Thing.

I remember…

...Metallica’s “Black” album
...the memorial concert for Freddie Mercury
...the MTV Comedy Hour Half Hour
...that VH1 was for old farts
...conventional wisdom said that “service jobs” were the future
...gas was cheap
...airplanes were safe
...the Russians were our friends, suddenly
...the Chinese were still bad guys, but we were going to do business with them, anyway
...George Bush didn’t seemed to notice the recession
...AIDS was scary
...Michael Jordan had not yet attained godhood
...No one had heard of NASCAR
...Cindy Crawford was the sexiest woman on the planet
...Prince rocked
...Everyone bought CDs
...“Cheers” and Bart Simpson ruled TV
...Kenneth Branagh was Henry V
...fax machines were high-tech
...people used floppy disks

But then Beth was born, and I dropped out of society. From 1994 to halfway through 1998, I was working two jobs, raising my little girl, and struggling to keep my marriage together (we were young and poor and stressed out over dealing with a demanding baby, and I was a jerk much of the time). And during those years, I totally lost track of what else was going on.

When I finally attained some financial stability and my daughter had grown up enough to go to school, I looked around and the landscape had totally changed. Bill Clinton was an adulterous lame duck. There was no more “hair metal” on the radio, and even Nirvana was gone. I didn’t know who the “Friends” were or what “The X-Files” meant. My beloved Redskins sucked. Bosnia—where was that? The Chicago Bulls ruled. Oklahoma City—what the hell? MTV didn’t play music videos anymore. Everyone worried about the Y2K bug. Will Smith (“The Fresh Prince”) was a movie star? When did rap get so popular? And what was the big deal about this “e-mail” and “Internet” stuff?

I couldn’t relate. So much had flown by. All I could do was scramble to fit back in. In 1998, I learned how to use Windows and MS Word. I got on the Internet. After that, I learned who Britney, Justin, and Xina were. I watched Bush Jr. trounce McCain. I found out about Saving Private Ryan. And so on.

So now I’m connected again, more or less. I watch TV, I read the newspapers (online now, instead of in print), I follow sports and politics and I try to grasp the music (though a lot of it sounds the same to me. Don’t ask me to tell you the difference between Jet and The Killers. Couldn’t tell you).

But I’m not caught up. I feel like someone who was watching a movie, stepped out halfway through it to get popcorn, and came back to find the story had gone off in a wholly unexpected direction. Some of the characters are the same, most are not, and not much of it makes sense.

Sometimes my wife and I rent a DVD (DVDs? What happened to VHS?) of a movie from the 90’s that we missed when it first came out. Sometimes I make myself listen to a CD (I don’t have an iPod yet) from that time ("Blink 182 rocked! Whattya mean they broke up?")

Beth has grown into a lovely young lady, but she can’t help me with what I missed. The 90’s were before her time: the rest of this decade and the next one will be hers. She tells me how the kids at school wear their clothes and their hair, and it seems that my generation hasn’t told them that the 70’s are not the fashion example you want to follow. Her friends download music and their cellphones have cameras and ringtones and everything is MySpace and Wii and Ludacris and Pirates of the Caribbean and carbon emissions and no one listens to Britney anymore.

But her friends dig hair metal bands (but no one says “dig” these days) and I let her borrow my Guns-n-Roses shirts that I bought at concerts I went to before she was born, and she thinks I’m cool anyway.

Posted July 2007