Both near and far

It wasn't too long ago that we wrote 199x when we dated diaries, papers, checks or anything else. So when will the '90s become "retro"? Or are they already?

It was the decade in which I grew up. It was a decade that molded me, and many other American youths, into what we have become today -- just yesterday, but quite possibly a lifetime away.

The 1990s began with a recession. I'm sure that many of us will be able to recall that as school aged-children in the early '90s, the media encouraged us to "Buy American" -- and I'm sure that I'm wasn't the only nine-year-old to dutifully do so. The early '90s melted into the mid-'90s, and the Seattle Grunge scene made its way into the "mainstream culture." Hunter green and navy blue and sailors' hats and plaid swarmed streets and sidewalks as the newest fad in American culture.

1994 hit, marking the beginning of the genre of news that could arguably be said to characterize the 1990s. Nancy and Tonya, OJ and the white Bronco were just the beginning of what was to come -- the "entertainment scandals." The OJ trial dragged on and became progressively circus-like until its end in the fall of 1995. And then there was Paula. And Juanita. And who could forget our girl Monica? And as we sat in our reclining chairs, hungry for more of the intimate details of President Clinton's extramarital encounters, the economy was steadily improving.

Indeed, during the late 1990s, many people became less frugal, and the sport of "bargain hunting" began to peter out. Higher-end retail stores cropped up at shopping malls across the country. You couldn't turn around without catching a Gap, Crate & Barrel, Banana Republic, or Barnes & Noble in your view.

Many of us Americans found little to do to occupy our time but entertain ourselves. The wallets got fatter, the spending got looser, and the partying got louder. But when September 2001 rolled around, the cream puff of good economic and domestic fortune went, as they say, poof!

The caustic political commentator Howie Carr, among others, stated on a cable "food fight format" political talk show last September that "The '50s ended on November 22, 1963. The '90s ended on September 11, 2001." And as far as I'm concerned, I've never heard a truer statement in my life.

The Kennedy assassination ended the 1950s - a decade generally believed to be innocent, stable and wholesome in the United States. September 11th ended the 1990s -- a decade arguably assumed to be carefree, decadent, and apathetic. But a bigger parallel concerns the issue of the G word -- "generation."

The Kennedy assassination is the "Where Were You When...?" question of Baby Boomers' cocktail parties. My parents and their friends all remember exactly where they were, what they were doing, and whom they were with on that fateful Friday afternoon in 1963.

Ten, twenty, or thirty years later, all of us Generation Y-ers will hash up similar recollections of that fateful Tuesday morning in 2001. So what exactly does this mean for our generation?

Certainly, few would dispute that the Baby Boom generation was irrevocably changed after the Kennedy assassination -- many have said that the nation "lost its innocence" after the Kennedy assassination. So, what about us '90s kids?

There's no denying that we, as a nation and we, as a generation have been changed... but how? I know that I, and quite possibly the majority of you reading this article, were brought up in the 1990s. We came of age during the '90s. We were children of the '90s. And just about all of us lost a part of that childhood on September 11, 2001.

We lost the subconscious idea that we were "America the Untouchable;" that nothing tragic could befall us. We traded in our sense of national security for apprehension and fear. They were feelings which we thought were alien at first, but slowly we came to realize that those feelings were the norms in many countries of the world.

Clearly, we lost a large chunk of our idealism, maybe even all of it. There's no denying that September 11 was a terrible way in which to lose it -- but who's to say that it was such a bad thing to lose?

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.