I was only eight years old at the time, but I remember watching that debate specifically because it was a big deal that he was on the stage. To eight-year-old me, that was history in the making.
Thinking back, I was a pretty weird kid. I also vividly remember pretending I was asleep until my grandparents went to bed, then sneaking back to the living room and turning on the TV to watch the news during the Operation Desert Storm (Jan 1991) and the Ruby Ridge standoff (March 1993). I was seven and nine years old for those events, respectively. We didn't even have cable, so I was flipping between infomercials on the three channels we got over the air and trying to catch reruns of the news.