I Thought the ’90s Would Be More… Predictable

In 1990, I was 22 years old. I was pretty sure I had life figured out, even if I was beginning to suspect my hair had other plans. Somewhere around that year I caught a glimpse in the mirror and realized my forehead was quietly negotiating a hostile takeover. I figured losing my hair would be the biggest change I’d have to deal with during the decade.

Turns out, I wasn’t even close.

The funny thing about living through the ‘90s is that they never felt like this massive cultural reset while they were happening. Nobody woke up one morning and declared, “Well, that’s it. Hair metal’s over. Everybody grab a flannel. Also, you’ll be getting your news from a computer soon.”

Everything just… shifted.

At the beginning of the decade, cassette tapes still ruled my car. CDs were around, but I wasn’t convinced paying eighteen bucks for one album made much sense when I already had a perfectly good cassette that occasionally decided to eat itself. Before long, though, we all had those giant CD towers that somehow became acceptable living room furniture.

Music kept reinventing itself. The artists who owned the late ’80s suddenly had to make room for grunge, alternative rock, gangsta rap, country crossovers, Britpop, ska, swing revivals, and then, just when you thought everyone had settled down, along came the boy bands and pop princesses. It was impossible to keep up, but it was never boring.

MTV changed almost without us noticing. In 1990 it still felt like the place you went to watch music videos. By the end of the decade, you could flip it on and wonder if they’d accidentally forgotten music was supposed to be part of the channel. We all complained, but somehow we still knew what was on.

Technology probably changed life more than anything else. In 1990, if someone wasn’t home, they simply weren’t home. You left a message on the answering machine and hoped they’d call back before bedtime. By 1999, people were carrying cell phones that weighed about as much as a bowling ball. They weren’t smart, but they felt like science fiction.

Then the internet showed up.

At first it sounded like something only computer nerds cared about. Then somebody showed you email. Then somebody else showed you a website. Before long, we were all listening to that wonderful symphony of dial-up screeches while everyone in the house argued over who tied up the phone line.

Entertainment changed, too. Special effects reached the point where every summer had to feature something enormous trying to destroy humanity. Dinosaurs. Aliens. Asteroids. Tornadoes. Sometimes all you needed was a bucket of popcorn and a willingness to suspend disbelief for two hours.

Looking back, what I remember most are the little things nobody thought would disappear. Memorizing phone numbers. Waiting a week for the next episode of your favorite show because there was no other option. Renting movies on Friday night and praying the new release wasn’t already gone. Taking a roll of film to be developed and discovering that half your vacation pictures featured somebody’s thumb.

None of those moments felt important at the time. They were just part of everyday life. That’s probably the biggest trick time plays on us. You don’t realize you’re living through an era until somebody decades later starts calling it “retro.”

By the time 1999 rolled around, I had less hair, a lot more CDs, an email address I barely knew how to use, and a growing suspicion that the world was going to keep changing whether I liked it or not. Looking back now, the biggest surprise isn’t how much changed. It’s how normal it all seemed while we were living through it.

Of course, if you’d told 22-year-old me that someday I’d carry a computer in my pocket that’s more powerful than anything NASA had when they landed on the moon… I’d probably have asked whether it could rewind a cassette without using a pencil.