• by jessie , April 27, 2011

One of my roommates did something the other day that at first… no one understood.
She brought home her oversized, purple VHS player from middle school.

We placed the contraption gently on the coffee table, slowly backed away and starred at it.

Eventually, we realized that it could be hooked up to our TV and ran to Dave’s Video where we immediately bought Spiceworld on VHS for $2.99.

We became best friends with our new, old technology.

Over Easter I ran across some old home movies. And by some, of course I mean stacks and stacks of unmarked, unmarked VHS tapes, which I had to bring home.

The first one I put in was my third birthday party. Every family member I could possibly name was there with goofy pants and much bigger hair.

My family was clearly still getting used to their awkwardly large, difficult to use video camera at the time and it stood out to me how excited my older cousins got when they realized that not only were they being taped, but that they could actually watch themselves on TV later.

“Can we watch ourselves later?” my cousin chimed after a great whiffle ball hit.
“Sure, on the BIG TV,” my uncle reassured.

As I enjoyed watching my family and admiring their attire and hairstyles (that people actually wore in the 90’s), I realized that my little cousins are not receiving the home video attention I got as a child. I know mothers with blogs with thousands and thousands of pictures, but somehow this still feels like a step back.

Some experts have predicted that home movies will make a comeback, given the video quality of newer technology, such as the iPhone; however, I am not so sure.

The technology has been available for some time now to make home videos more efficiently than before, and yet, we’ve resorted back to still pictures. Not that I’m opposed to still pictures. It’s an art form I appreciate and wish I knew more about, but my little cousins will not have stacks and stacks of VHS tapes to look through to see themselves growing up.

I hope that my children will be able to view videos from their childhood someday. I hope they sit around and make fun of my outfits and hair do’s because that is such a cool experience for me and I would never want to deny them of that. Be it an iPhone or outdated, oversized awkward video camera – I hope to record every single present they open and every single step they take.