The 90s are a self-contained decade with a small recession, a famous murder, a presidential sexual conquest, and the fear of Y2K. You have a lot of fun Hollywood movies, The Simpsons, and the Yankees winning a lot of World Series. And boomers are moving to cul-de-sac neighborhoods newly built. All of this is very fixed in your mind and feels as far away as a foreign country. Your family got their first desktop computer when you were in third grade. You used it mostly to play Civilization. You don't really remember getting high-speed internet until the 2000s. At some point, you got higher speed internet. The 2000s for an adolescent and teenager are meant bearing witness to the breakdown of that 90s world. As much as the 1960s must have felt like the witnessing of the breakdown of that 50s world, although the 2000s look very different than the 60s. You remember your friend introducing you to The Strokes at the lunch table in seventh grade: he has a copy of Spin magazine. These new bands are really cool. The White Stripes, the Strokes. Rock is back. Isn't that great? You don't really know anything. You just like The Beatles. And you used to listen to The Beatles 1 on a CD player in your room over and over. 9-11 happens at the same time. These big events emanate from New York, 70 miles away. The Strokes, 9-11. The rebirth of Downtown Cool. 9-11. It's very strange. You go to war later, two wars. You have the idea that people are dying, but it's all just on TV. At a relatively young age, you learn how to become numb and desensitized to world-shaking events; you are safe inside the empire. That's the important thing. China-shock is also beginning to be felt. Sometimes people lose their jobs. Fathers and mothers of friends. People have moved into homes they can't afford. Or can't afford if something goes wrong and things are starting to go wrong. Twenty miles west of Bethlehem into Pennsylvania. The loss of those jobs must be felt much more acutely. You get a sense of it playing Little League, traveling a little bit around the area. That's how you learn the world isn't uniform, that everyone's experience is not as secure and consistent as yours is.
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