I used to think the 90s sucked.
This morning, I looked outside upon waking up and saw how rainy and gray it was. A perfect day to lounge about and stay off my feet. Since I had a toenail removed Friday, a healing day made sense. Then came in our daughter who complained that we never take her to our favorite breakfast place anymore. As I didn't feel like making eggs or anything else just yet, I acquiesced and put on my Beavis and Butthead pajamas...Lou's Diner workers know me, so nobody to impress today.
Upon arrival, there was the usualy 15-20 minute wait since Lou's is quite popular these days. While I sat waiting and Natalie and Vickie went to the antique shop to wait in warmth, a guy sitting near me noticed my "trendy" pajama pants with admiration and I mentioned my recent acquisition of all episodes dating back to its 1992 pilot. I also mentioned us listening to Denis Leary's classic "Asshole" song from 1993. As the brief nostalgic dialogue ended, I sat for a few more minutes and thought a lot about that period of life as I saw it.
I was, and am currently, generally not what people would consider hip or cool, at least not when it comes to crowds. Individuals will compliment me on a shirt I am wearing, but then I defer to Vickie's good sense of me and realize that if it weren't for her, I'd have probably 2 pairs of pants and a few solid polo shirts along with a month of underwear and socks.
In fact, I never was really cool as a person, definitely not in childhood, even less in high school, maybe a tad cooler in college in a place where nobody really knew me yet and I could fake them out temporarily. This was especially true when it came to music and the current trends. I didn't really watch MTV much, so I didn't get into the music video thing regularly. So if you were to ask me what the coolest songs of 1987 or 1988 were, I'd probably name songs from movies like Top Gun or Dirty Dancing. I was that way for some time, being several cars behind the cool pole position of life.
Sometimes, though, there is a magical moment where one is suddenly caught up on a few things. This happened in late 1993 for me. I had just turned 21 and was looking for a brief respite from San Diego. I had just recently started back at school upon establishing a year of residency with a lot of go-nowhere part time jobs and a ton of loneliness. School helped a bit with that but I was looking forward to a "going back home" feeling so to speak.
My high school buddy Tris said there was room at his house since his mom was out of town, so I had asked for my big Christmas present to be a trip back to good ol Reading, PA.
Wait...where? some of you are asking. You wanted to go away from comfy-in-the-winter San Diego to visit wintry hell eastern Pennsylvania?
In a word, yes! San Diego did not feel like home at all...and quite frankly it would never achieve that status, neither would Sonoma County for my 8 year residency up there, though I will say that in terms of scenery, I do have a place in my heart for Northern Cal. The problem is, aside from parents and aunt and some scattered family, I had no people in San Diego to speak of, no lasting memory to this day of peers who warmed my heart for a lifetime. I then think of Berks County and a flood of memories, good and bad, come to me, and that is where I will ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS think of as home, even though I know 30 plus years have passed since I moved away and things definitely changed.
In late 1993, I know of a lot of people who were still there: Tris, Jeremy Bitz, Derek Coller and his then girl Kelly Beissel, Zach Hunchar, and several old classmates I had known for years. Not all of the classmates were precisely friends but I knew who they were and what they were about, and I felt safe with them. Even if they joshed around with me about my lack of with-it-ness at times, I felt I could be myself with them.
Now, during this visit, I came into contact with some pop culture elements that I had heart faint rumblings about, but did not actually experience. Like I said, I hung out with about nobody except my parents, and they were not exactly people I wanted to be around much of the time, especially as their marriage was in the early stages of deterioration.
These pop culture elements were Beavis and Butthead, Denis Leary, and The Jerky Boys. I would definitely get more into Beavis and Butthead when I went away to college at Sonoma State, since a lot of us would watch it at its 11:00 time slot nightly. On New Year's Eve at Rick Klingaman's house, I got a taste of Denis Leary's stand-up and The Jerky Boys' prank calls. I bought some when I got back to San Diego and my dad found The Jerky Boys absolutely hilarious. So did more than a few college friends later on. Somehow that kind of comedy was so east coast that many of the west coasters found it funny but also not their precise style.
I am still east coast and will remain so.
Apart from that little awakening, I still missed out on a lot of 90s in terms of music. I was listening to a lot of classic rock and oldies for much of the decade. The Doors were and still are a major favorite. It actually was not until I met Vickie that I got more acquainted with Pearl Jam, 9 Inch Nails, Alice in Chains, Foo Fighters, Weezer, No Doubt, Metallica, and Stone Temple Pilots, among others. I am still behind the times, but after listening to what is out there now, I am quite glad to be stuck in the past, even if it is 30-40 years past. I can live with that easily.
The 90s didn't really suck, they just had to wait a while for me to catch up.
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