It’s been 20 years: You oughta know
Ok. I write this with a very heavy heart, A very heavy heart. I think I am getting older. Duh. Doh. Eek. Yes. Obviously, the day we are born we start getting older. However, lately I have found myself going “oh my has it been that long?” That is setting me off on a bit of unasked for nostalgia. A few nights ago I was watching jeopardy where the latest twitter sensation Matt Jackson had won his 10th game. The final jeopardy category was super easy. The answer was “AS PART OF ITS 30TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION IN 2014, THIS VIDEO GAME USED THE SLOGAN WE ALL FIT TOGETHER.” Before I could process what came out of my mouth I screamed at the television “tetris!” I was ecstatically right and then I felt deflated. I processed what I had just said. Tetris has been around for 30 years years. That is crazy. When I went to college, it had already been out for more than a decade but I had never heard of it till my college housemate got the game on her computer. Then I dreamt of those boxes for night after night. If you have ever played it, you know exactly what I mean about the nighttime Tetris visions. Those boxes, those little boxes just kept falling. Eventually I stopped playing and those visions went away.
Years later, a song came out called “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette. It was angry, daring and growled by a female. It was awesome for a while for it was the ultimate “bad break-up” song. Then, of course, the song was over played ad nauseam. At first, though, it was cool. Now, today, it has been 20 years since that song came out. Twenty years! What? My Entertainment Weekly magazine dissected that time and kept emphasizing how that song was released 20 years ago paving the way for many other female artists to be so raw in their words and emotions. Ironically (major pun intended) the television show Full House ended right around the time Alanis’ song was released (many believe that Dave guy from Full House was Alanis’ bad break-up) and it is returning to television this year. Why must bad television go around, come around?
But back to my existential crisis. How did 20 years go by so quickly. I seriously can’t wrap my head around this. To me, that song, just came out a few years ago. Not two decades ago. I looked up what else happened 20 years ago and was astounded to find that eBay was launched and the final Calvin and Hobbes Strip was published. Many kids these days would have no clue about Calvin and Hobbes. It’s all Minecraft and Skylander characters now. I believe eBay still exists. Thus far, I have only used eBay twice in 2004 for a Bridesmaid’s dress. I still have it. I suppose it is nice that the dress still fits.
As the rock group the Suburbs notes:
“I used to write
I used to write letters
I used to sign my name“
So, I sip my coffee and wonder whether I am experiencing nostalgia, mid-life crisis or just a random stream of consciousness. I oughta know. I need to know. Maybe.
I think I need to make my own time capsule and see what remains big in 20 years. Twenty years. Some things stay the same; others are completely gone with the wind.
Categories: Celebrity, music, Pop Culture, Psychology
psychologistmimi 
Oh, Mimi…it’s like you speak to my own brain. I completely feel this post. I sang a Paula Cole song to one of my classmates the other day and realized she was born the year it came out (gasp)…you KNOW which song it was.
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Lol. That happens to me in my workplace quite often. And yes, I know which song you are referencing …I can hear that beginning beat right now 🙂
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I have a different take on getting older, the passage of time is an accumulation of wisdom, experience and life lessons. When I first started to notice I was out of the trendy loop of the cool people the first thing I asked myself is “Would I go back to being that age and interested in those things?” A resounding “NEVER.” came back to me and I never looked back again. Only with morbid curiosity do I look at the passage of time any more and why youth and ignorance, trends that take off like a rocket, are heralded as the best place to be. Wherever we are right now is exactly where we are supposed to be. I have seldom visited an old neighborhood where I used to live, always a disappointment. Everyone gets to experience the same feeling if they are lucky enough to live long enough. You always do posts that get me to reflect Mimi, another good one!
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I sort of see you’re thinking I feel as though we all hit a point in our lives where we realise how old we are!
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Indeed! That moment does happen and can be surprising. 🙂
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So bloody true. I’m finding myself amazing myself more and more often as I recall a certain event that seems like it happened last year at the latest. And find it was 5, 10 times later than that. I recall hearing as a kid how time would speed up once I got older. But, being a kid, and living in my kid time zone, the words resonated with as much conviction and sense as if coming from Charlie Brown’s teacher: Wah – Wah – Wah ….
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This inspired and A-ha moment! Before that, I was going to comment that everything seems to move so fast in our current modern age. Could it be instead, as Roman suggested, that this increasing speed is due more to my current relative advanced age than just living in modern times? As Mister Bill used to say on SNL – “Oh, noooooo…!”
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You Oughta Know sounds just as electrifying today as it did 20
years ago. I feel sorry for the generation today whose roll
models are manufactured Disney/ Nickelodeon “stars” & their
“music”. Alanis is an artist that comes along once in a lifetime.
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For you it is 20 years. For me, it is 40. I can’t believe it… 40 years ago I was young and healthy and beautiful and immortal. Today I am none of those things. Kansas had just released “Dust in the Wind” and I play it over and over until the record wears out. The Russians are threatening us with nuclear annihilation, the Iranians were giving us headaches, North Korea was acting aggressively, there were riots in the streets over racial injustice.
But wait… Am I in a time warp? Nothing has changed. No wonder it seems like yesterday.
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