For those 45+, how good were the 1990s, actually?

[Anonymous]

Graduated from college in 95 into a tough job market. The 90s were alright. Not perfect, but far less dystopian than it feels now for my kids.

It was odd how you could just lose people and never see them again. For instance, I went backpacking in Europe for 6 weeks in 1997 - i called my parents only once to check in because it was too expensive to make international phone calls! - and met a bunch of people… and have no idea who they were. Like I spent 3 days walking around Luxembourg city with some awesome guy named Luke from the PNW who I met in the hostel, and never even knew his last name. Maybe he’s a serial killer, maybe he’s a tech billionaire. Who knows?

I went to Wesleyan (the one in CT) and remember that my parents’ payment for the first semester (tuition + room and board) was about $11,500. I had to kick in $2000-4000/year for books and spending money, much of which I had saved from babysitting money. I had started doing a ton of babysitting when I was in about 8th grade. Who nowadays would ever let a 12 year old kid from the neighborhood watch their 1, 3 and 5 year olds while the parents went out to a movie and then drove home kind-of-drunk? It’s inconceivable. While babysitting, I remember being excited to watch MTV (my parents didn’t have cable) and also sneak reading copies of “the joy of s-x.” A shocking number of parents with little kids had that book in the 80s - often just sitting on a shelf in the family room, which I suppose no one needs anymore because of the internet!

In keeping with my babysitting experience, in general things were more loosey-goosey, and our houses/cars/clothes weren’t as nice. I had a solidly upper middle class upbringing, and never flew on a plane until after college - we went on vacation by driving to the poconos or the beach with our food in a big cooler in the back of a station wagon (groceries were too expensive to buy in vacation destinations). My parents - who sent me to Wes without financial aid - still had plastic end tables and a black and white TV when I left for college. My sister still wore my hand-me-down clothes.

I did work very hard in high school, but it was much easier to get into good colleges. Wesleyan wouldn’t even consider my application now! Identity politics were very limited, and my first exposure to that was college. For instance, my best friend growing up was Asian-American and a year ahead of me in school, and I remember her writing to me in a letter (that I got in the mail - we didn’t hours decorating the letters and envelopes) that she had joined a club for Asian-Americans at college. I was completely puzzled because somehow it didn’t really occur to me over the 10+ years i knew her that she was Asian-American. That sounds really stupid in 2025, but things were indeed different in the 90s….