20 years!?

I met someone today who was born in 1990.  Normally, I would not think too much about this, but then I realized that he will turn 20 this year.  That, to me, is crazy.  It is not really fair or accurate to say that it just feels like yesterday, but it does seem like 20 years has gone by quickly.  The craziest part, perhaps, is that I actually can remember things that happened 20 years ago.  If I can remember something from 20 years ago, that means time, as it always does, is passing quickly.  When I was thinking about it, I remembered some events and milestones.  But, when I looked up other events that happened in 1990, I was amazed at how much stuff there was in that year, and how much the events of 1990 still resonate, even if it was quite a while ago.

It was essentially the end of the cold war, which was a HUGE event, for obvious reasons.  The world would not be what it is today without the cold war ending the way that it did, clearly.  Things could easily have been much much different, to use a major understatement.

1990 was also the year Nelson Mandela was released.  It was when Germany  re-unified.  It was the year that saw the beginnings of the gulf war, another event we are still experiencing fall out from.  It was the year the trial for the captain of the Exxon Valdez began.  President Bush (the first one - can you believe there have been two of them???) and Gorbachev agree to end production of chemical weapons.   The ADA was passed, which allowed everyone with disabilities access to the same stuff as everyone else.  So many major events, and still 20 years later, we still feel their effects.

The 49ers beat the Broncos 55-10 in the Super Bowl XXIV.  The "Bad Boy" Pistons beat the awesome Portland Trail Blazers in the NBA finals (ouch, still).  Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture, beating such classics (now) as The Godfather part III, Home Alone, Pretty Woman, Dances With Wolves, Edward Scissorhands, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Tears for Fears, Vanilla Ice, the B52s, and Cher were on the radio.  We still listened to the radio, and when not the radio, we used cassettes.  Microsoft released windows 3.0.  The world wide web didn't really exist - the first web page was written in 1990.  No one had computers to look at the web page, so no one saw it until later.  The three tenors sang for the first time the night before he final match of the world cup (West Germany beat Argentina 1-0).  The Simpsons aired it's very first episode.  The tunnel between France and England was completed.

I guess this is all to say that time sure does pass quickly, and it is amazing how fast.  It is also amazing how long the effects of these things can last.  I don't know if 1990 was a particularly important or eventful year - that comparison will have to happen at another time - or if every year has this many important events.  I would love to hear thoughts and memories from those who do remember the beginning of the 90s decade, which can only happen if I ever decide to send out the link.

Maybe soon we will look back to that whole Y2K fiasco - believe it or not, that was 10 years ago.  That one does seem like it was just yesterday, but I am sure if I look back at it some more, I will find that life was a lot different back then as well.