You want to know what I was like in the ’90s, kids? Take a deep breath and imagine Snapchat doesn’t exist, and the only way to find out who’s having a party tonight is to press *69 on a landline phone and ask someone’s mom.
We were built differently back then. I once had a three-hour argument in a mall food court about which actor was in that one movie with the bus, with absolutely no way to resolve it other than unearned confidence. I wish you knew what an indie record store basement smelled like vs. the charcuterie-catered, Instagram-worthy parties we’ve been throwing for you since you were eight.
I wore belted, baggy jeans, not for the silhouette but because they covered the fact that my primary source of nutrition was gas-station pretzels and lukewarm coffee. I wasn’t doing beach waves with an automatic curler from Sephora. My look was more “I passed out with wet hair on a radiator last night.”
Nothing about love was complicated back then. Relationships lingered without the ability to instantly reach someone via text, and most breakups were done on a folded piece of loose-leaf paper. My peak romance was the guy I met in a dive bar who gave me a mixtape, followed by a hickey he sucked out on my neck while I leaned on a dumpster in the alley.
If I said I’d meet someone at a bar at 10 p.m., I just stood there alone sipping my amaretto sour. If they didn’t show up, I didn’t get a text saying: Running late. I just went home and assumed they had moved or died.
What did I do for fun? I read the liner notes of my Alanis Morissette Jagged Little Pill CD like they were scripture. I scrounged for loose change in grandpa’s two-tone station wagon to pocket for my next $1.98 pack of Kool 100 Milds. Or I went to a movie and didn’t know what it was about until I saw the poster in the lobby. There was no doomscrolling, only staining my fingertips with the same copy of Rolling Stone for months.
So, no, honey, I wasn’t “vibing” in the ’90s. I was perpetually slurping a forty-ounce Slushie, waiting for a payphone, and shaking cigarette ash off my oversized flannel shirt. Just like you, I was figuring it out, only with better music and thankfully scant photographic evidence. And you came from all that. So, lowkey, you’re welcome, bruh.
But if you really want the ’90s experience, take your iPhone, throw it into a storm drain, then go sit in a dark room listening to the Goo Goo Dolls until you feel an unidentifiable sense of dread. It should take about four minutes and fifty seconds. Then call me.