One Day Only Old People Will Remember the ’90s

Picking up on something Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote here
this morning:

To younger members of Gen X and
older millennials, [Saved by the Bell] is part of the
childhood canon. I think we all died a little inside yesterday in
the Reason D.C. office when we realized that none of our interns
and a few of our youngest staffers had no idea who Jessie Spano
was. By a quick show of birth years, we pipointed 1990 as the crack
in this generational divide. I shudder to ask them about the Soup
Nazi—though I suppose Seinfeld is a show you’re more prone
to watch in reruns as an adult than Saved by the Bell.
(Another show launched in 1989, The Simpsons, is still
airing after all these years.)

I was watching some old episodes of The Simpsons with
one of my kids the other night, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt
quite as decrepit as I did when I realized that “Marge vs. the
Monorail” is 21 years old. Put another way: The gap between now
and “Marge vs. the Monorail” is larger than the gap between “Marge
vs. the Monorail” and the fall of Saigon. I would have told my
daughter that, but then she would’ve asked “What’s a Saigon?” and I
would’ve felt even older. It was bad enough that I had to explain
who Leonard Nimoy was. He isn’t even dead yet.