O P I N I O N
NOT THAT PROFOUND
By Nathan Graziano
It was apropos of nothing when my 22-year-old daughter recently sent a text message to inform me that not only do I listen to a steady diet of “Dad Rock” but I also dress as if it were still the 1990s.
She is not wrong.
“Dad Rock” now covers the music from the grunge-era, and I still listen to it religiously. And my wardrobe still consists of baggy jeans, concert T-shirts, a collared shirt that I wear with the buttons “undone,” and a rainbow array of v-neck sweaters.
You see, I miss the ‘90s and refuse to let them go.
It blows my mind that those days of my youthful insouciance of now three decades is in my “rearview mirror.”
But if you believe my refusal to let go of this idyllic decade is just about distortion and denim, you “got me wrong.” It goes deeper than that.
I was recently chatting with an old college friend, a fellow Gen-Xer, about this same topic, and we both agreed that we completely took the ‘90s for granted, and “today,” as the nation has “[fallen] on black days,” it has become abundantly clear that it was a special decade.
For starters, the ‘90s were the last time that this country was not at war. Sure, there were a few squabbles in the Persian Gulf and Eastern Europe, but it wasn’t war like the wars that have become normalized since 9-11.
Then, of course, there was the music. I can remember being 16 years old when “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was first released, then buying “Nevermind” on CD.
I can remember Pearl Jam’s “Vs” album coming out and being blasted throughout the halls of every dorm my freshman year in college, and I can remember watching Alice in Chains “Unplugged” for the first time in my filthy frat house.
If this is the stuff of “Dad Rock” then I will continue to hold my head high, flash the double-devil horns and embrace the fact that my hearing sucks now that I’m in my 50s.
But, for me, what I truly miss is not the rock and roll, but the quiet.
In the ‘90s, we didn’t have the ubiquitous drone of social media, the buzzing and squawking and bitching that never shuts off. Sure, I can drown it out by deleting all of my accounts and nuking all of the apps, but I’m not courageous enough to do it.
But I still miss that quiet, the privacy and the comfort that comes with knowing that your every bathroom break isn’t being documented and monitored. It was also exponentially more difficult to make a complete ass out of yourself when it wasn’t being recorded and posted for the world to view.
In the ‘90s, I used to actually compose letters to my friends then mail them—with stamps and envelopes and stuff—as a means of correspondence. I rarely used my email back then, and there was no such thing as a text message. I had to think about what I wanted to say, who I wanted to say it to, and how I wanted to say it.
In other words, I had to write.
Of course, a lot of this is simply nostalgia presented through rose-tinted lenses, but I’m okay with being a “basket case.” So excuse me while I flip my baseball cap backwards, throw on some worn and torn jeans, and buy a 12-pack of Natural Light and some Camels and brick weed and have myself a night.
It’s still fun to pretend.
You can read the fictionalized version of my ’90s experiences, “Some Sort of Ugly” here, or listen to the audio version, read by Thaddeus Kraus, here.
Contact Nathan Graziano at ngrazio5@yahoo.com.