A Love Letter to the 90s

I grew up in that house. The one I still think of as my real childhood home.

I spent most of the 90s there, and emotionally, I was a shy kid. My self-esteem didn’t start off low, though. At first, I was free. I was joyful. I didn’t second-guess myself yet.

That changed when school entered the picture.

School made everything heavier. It became harder to keep friends, harder to feel like I fit. Most of the people I felt close to weren’t from my classroom. They were from my neighborhood. Kids I could see every day. Especially my best friend who lived right next door.

That house, that block, that time in my life made me feel safe. Truly safe.

I can count on one hand the moments in ten years when I didn’t feel that way, and even those moments never lasted long.

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A normal day back then started early. Around 7:30 in the morning, because school was at 8:30.

There were five of us kids in the house, not counting our parents, all sharing one bathroom. So mornings were loud and rushed whether we wanted them to be or not.

School let out at 3:30, and since it was right around the corner, we usually just walked home. We only got picked up if we had somewhere else to be. Otherwise, we walked. That was just the routine.

When I got home, I’d either turn on TRL or fall straight asleep in my school clothes. No in-between.

Some days I was glued to the TV. Other days I was buried in magazines. I loved magazines. That was my thing.

All of that happened after homework, though. Homework always came first. We did it at the dining room table, and I almost always needed help with math.

When my mom started her daycare, the house got louder. We’d play with the kids downstairs in the basement, which was only partially finished but still felt like our space.

Every day followed that same rhythm, just with different pieces filling it in.

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I stayed up late back then. I still do.

I was always a night owl, even as a kid. So by the time I woke up for school, I was already tired. And by the time I got home, I was exhausted.

I’d get yelled at for still being up when it was late, but I never really learned how to turn my mind off.

Some things don’t change.

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We were outside a lot back then. All of us kids were.

Even me, though not as much as my siblings. They lived outside. I lived in sound.

I was a music person. A TV person. Any free time I had, that’s where it went. That’s probably why I carry around so much random entertainment knowledge now. It just stayed with me.

The house was always busy. The TVs were almost always on. Music too, and most of the time, it was mine.

I got my first radio in the 90s as a birthday gift, maybe a late one. It was black and bulky, the kind you carried from room to room like it mattered.

The first cassettes I ever owned were Thriller, Bad, and The Best of Michael Jackson from 1975 by Michael Jackson.

Songs like “Got to Be There,” “Morning Glow,” “With a Child’s Heart,” “Happy.”

Those tapes stayed in rotation.

That music felt like company. Like comfort. Like something steady in the background of growing up.

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Summers sounded different.

We had a pool, so there were always pool parties. Barbecues. Family filling the house.

My mom and dad loved to host, so summer meant noise, laughter, music, kids running in and out, food on the grill.

The house was rarely quiet, and it never felt empty.

That was just how it was.

That was the 90s in our house.

The 90s had a sound to it. Not just one sound, but layers of them.

Music from every genre. Cartoons playing in the background. The jingle of keys when someone came through the door.

The click and whir of tapes recording. The mechanical sounds of the VCR. VHS tapes being pushed in, rewound, played again.Even outside had a soundtrack.

At night, you could hear the toads in our yard, steady and familiar, like they belonged there just as much as we did.

Those sounds didn’t announce themselves. They just existed.

And somehow, they made everything feel grounded. Safe. Like you always knew where you were.

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One thing I miss is the patience we had to have back then.

You had to wait for things. For shows to come on. For music to play on the radio. For tapes to rewind. For people to call you back.

Waiting was built into everyday life, and because of that, things felt shared. Collective.

We were all watching the same shows, hearing the same songs, waiting for the same moments.

Now it feels different.

There isn’t one thing we all enjoy together anymore. Everything is instant. Personalized. Separate.

Back then, even the waiting connected us. It gave moments weight. It made them matter.

Boredom existed back then. Real boredom.

And it wasn’t something we rushed to escape.

It gave us time to think. Time to write. Time to sit with our thoughts.

It strengthened my imagination. I had to make something out of nothing. Entertain myself. Create worlds in my head instead of scrolling through someone else’s.

That kind of boredom shaped me.

It taught me how to be alone without feeling lonely.

If I could go back for one day, I’d choose fifth grade.

That was the best part of my childhood. Everything seemed to come together then.

I didn’t know it at the time, but looking back, that year held something steady. Something good.

It sits in my memory differently than the rest, like a pause where life felt balanced, even with everything going on around me.

Why does the 90s still live in me?

Because I still live there. Mentally, at least.

That decade shaped how I think, how I listen, how I notice things. It’s where my sense of comfort comes from. Where my references live. Where my pacing was set.

Even now, a lot of who I am traces back to that time, like I never fully left it behind.

And honestly, I don’t mind that at all.