Looking back at the 90's now i really hate how i didn't appreciate all the things i had like i should have. Back then i took everything for granted like old school Nick, old school MTV, getting into the latest fads with my friends etc. I didn't appreciate it because i never stopped to think ''Hey all this may be gone one day'' i just thought that it would last forever


Do anyone else on here feel as if they took what they had for granted in the 90's?

well, for me, not so much the 90s, but the 80s and 70s. 

I think it's a part of growing up/growing older, you start feel nostalgic for things that are familiar and you enjoyed at a certain time of your life.

Things I think I took for granted back in the 90's:

GOOD MUSIC.  I swear I never had any idea that music on the radio would devolve so badly in the following decade.  Rock, hip hop, Top 40... it all seems to have lost its way by now.

ENTERTAINING RADIO.  Kind of like the music... who would've known that radio would have gotten so damn corporate in the following years, and that the content would actually become MORE restrictive as time passed?  Seriously, Howard Stern pointed out frequently that things he was doing and saying in 1995 would get him fined off the air in 2005.  The same goes for my favorite local radio morning show here in San Diego, Dave, Shelley and Chainsaw.  They actually replay old bits from the 90's that have to be edited and censored now before they can go to air!  How could any of us know that Janet Jackson's boob on TV would come with such horrible repurcussions??

LASERDISCS.  I know DVDs are better, and now Blu-rays are better than either of them.  But I miss being the only person I knew with Special Editions of T2, Aliens, The Abyss, and the Star Wars movies.

Which brings me to another taken-for-granted regret:

UNABASHED LOVE FOR STAR WARS.  Before 1999, no one ever had to qualify their adoration of the Star Wars movies by saying things like, "Well, I liked the original movies," or, "I liked it when I was a kid."  It was good, fine and wholly American to express your love for Star Wars.  Then the prequels had to come out and tarnish the classic, unbroken iconography of the series, not to mention the absolute genius of George Lucas.

HIGH SCHOOL.  Sure it sucked.  But compared to paying the rent, the water bill, the gas and electric bill, the cable bill, daycare costs, 8 different credit cards, and $3.80 a gallon for gas, high school was friggin' SWEET.  All I can say is I have not watched nearly enough Beavis and Butt-head nor played nearly enough video games since I graduated High School.

MTV'S THE STATE.  I figured the Monty Python of the 90's would be the new face of comedy, and as such, they'd be around as long as Python was.  But no.  They have almost all found steady work here and there, but only twice have they all appeared in a project together since The State left MTV.

RECORD STORES.  Not to bring it all back to the music again, but I spent some serious cash at Sam Goody's and Tower Records back in those days.  Now Tower Records is gone, and Sam Goody is next to fall to the Wal Mart empire.  (Did you know WalMart is the nation's leading music retailer, and only has about 5000 titles in stock at any time?  Compare that to the average Tower Records which typically held over 60,000 titles in each store.)

SATISFACTION WITH AMERICA'S LEADERSHIP.  I didn't love Bill Clinton when he was President.  I really didn't think one way or the other about the guy when he was in office.  I didn't even bother to vote for him '96, which was the first election I was old enough to vote in.  But I knew a few things:  He played a big role in bringing peace in Northern Ireland, he did his best to help the Arab-Israeli conflict when he had Rabin, Arafat and Peres sign the Declaration of Principles agreement on the White House Lawn in '93, and in his 8 years, he turned Reagan and Bush's Trillion-dollar defecit in to a balanced budget.  I knew things like that were big.  And sure Bill was good for a joke, but not because he was a complete dumbass.  And accomplishments like those that made a President worth respecting all left with him when he left the White House.  Ever since Dubya took the job... it's been nothing but the bottom of the barrel ever since.

THE WORLD TRADE TOWERS.  I never saw them in person; I've never been to New York.  But ever since they went away, the world has surely sucked.

And lastly...

MY 20's.  I love my girlfriend and our kids.  I love looking into my sons' eyes and seeing them embrace me as the man who will lead them through the world (at least until they can start to figure it out on their own,) but I miss being the dumb kid still trying to figure sh*t out.  The mistakes you make as a parent seem so much more substantial and damaging as opposed to the sh*t you step into when you're young.  I remember then thinking I was so busy and so broke and so worried, but I realize now just how much free time I had, how expendable my income was, and how little my problems really mattered in the long run.

Welcome to the new millennium, where everything has to stay completely off the radar in order to not get corrupted and homogenized. I reminisce about the 90's, and I wasn't even 10 yet! (Though this decade has had its highs, as well as its big time lows personally, but thats because I'm a teenager now)

Oh yeah, and the whole point of conservativeness is to deregulate business, yet whenever something "inappropriate" is heard or seen on the media, the respective company is automatically fined. It should be the parents duty to see to it that their kids dont watch that stuff, not the FCC's (Fearful and Corrupted Conservatives), so the rest of us dont have to be annoyed by the censoring  >:(! But parenting is something that has really gone down hill in the past few decades.

I certainly hope a democrat wins this upcoming election, so the 2010's can at least be a bit more free, but you know those Republicans! The rigging of the elections really needs to stop, or I see rebellions happening...no joke.

well, for me, not so much the 90s, but the 80s and 70s. 

I think it's a part of growing up/growing older, you start feel nostalgic for things that are familiar and you enjoyed at a certain time of your life.


Same over here  :(

We all take things for granted at times. I mean..even now, in the 00's....we are taking certain things for granted because they are happening NOW, but in 20 years we will look back to the "good old days" of the 00's.

  You're talking about the 90s but it's kind of a universal sentiment.  Ya never do appreciate it.  I don't know many people who had that kind of foresight.  When you're a kid you're just living for the moment...

  I wish I'd have taken more pictures of friends, family, our street.  Even the living room.  The memories are fading...

The fastest way to lose something -anything- is taking it for granted. But taking what you have for granted is the most common thing in the world, so do not make it a big deal. It is a very normal tendency we all have.

All we can do is try to remember that everything comes and goes so we had better cherish what makes us happy now. 

Karma to DJ Wonderbread for such a wonderful, inspiring post! :) So many things he stated, I miss as well. It's funny, really. I've always been such a fan of the 80s (and I still am), but more and more, I'm thinking about the way things were in the 90s and really missing those times...

I regret not getting into Nirvana at an earlier time than I did.

Although I did like some of their songs that played on the radio, I didn't check out any of their CDs until February 1996, nearly two years after Kurt's death.

There is a line in a movie I just watched again.

"If I knew things would no longer be, I would have tried to remember better."

I thought that was apropos for this thread.

Great post, DJ Wonderland (and good points by everyone, really). :)

Basically I think it is a universal statement, that when things in your life start REALLY changing, that freaks you out and makes you want to retreat to a safer time. In terms of the '90s though, I feel the same way. Even though I had some mild nostalgia for my early childhood (since there was some stuff in my life that sucked, or I had grandparents die) or I dug '80s music it wasn't like I was stuck in the past either. I loved both with equal aplomb, and I think it's because not that much had changed in the world, so I didn't have a whole lot to compare it to.

The world tends to really get refaced after about 20 years though, and I'm just now seeing that, which does make me wish I'd appreciated some things from back then, small and large...just because I took them for granted. I do think in some ways it was the last "old fashioned" decade that still held traces of old traditions that predated the Internet and cellphones, at least in terms of saturation. People did things outside more, and like you still listened to the radio or watched TV for basic entertainment, or read and colored.

I also miss the relative closeness to the '80s (and my very early life/childhood), beings that it was "seven years ago" or "ten years ago" then, not another generation. People were still basically the same age (unless they were young kids) and hadn't totally moved into different areas of life and all.




You know, my dad said something about me once when I was complaining about missing my childhood or even my high school years (which I never though I would until much later), and I think it's true. He said on the effect of every 3 or 4 years I start missing things in my life...which I've totally noticed. He's also used that argument for me to not take things in the present for granted either and to enjoy them, which probably isn't bad advice. In a weird way though, I almost feel like if I take the time to really enjoy simple things from now, that's just gonna make me sad that they won't last either. In 2015 or 2020 I'll just miss today's good times too.