For the past few years, my Christmas presents have been converting old VHS to DVD's of home videos. When technology changes, so must the memories. The nice part is that you can make copies for everyone. It is a long and tedious process, but well worth it. Part of this process is watching each and every VHS. It is so funny to see things that you'd forgotten about. Like a brother who is so adamant about building an igloo in the backyard. Or the fact that you tried to build a snow hill in your backyard for sledding.
Dating these videos is also fun. My first clues for dates are how many kids there are at the time. Then I look at the age of the youngest... and then if I still can't figure it out I refer to clothes and furniture. I know that I may be off by a bit, but it sure is funny to see those hideous and surely flammable 80's bangs. Good times. What makes this even harder to date is that we lived in Idaho at one point in time. For anyone who has ever been there, they know that they are 10 years behind in fashion anyway... so what looks like the 80's was actually the 90's. Refer to Napoleon Dynamite.
My mom also had 20+ rolls of undeveloped film. I snagged them from her and took them in to see what was possibly on them. Lots of the film was so old that it was no longer good... but some of the film turned out incredible. The funny thing is seeing pictures, being in them, and not having any idea what you were doing. There was one picture where I was surely old enough to remember the activity, but have no idea what we were doing. I showed my sister the picture, and she too has no recollection. It happened though, because we have the picture to prove it.
Amazing how we forget things. I guess that is why it is so important to document and write things down. My younger journals are pretty funny though. Not much more than, "so and so is hot and I hope he notices me..." If only I knew then what I know now. Maybe I wouldn't have spent so much time and energy on things that didn't matter. But the real question is... have I really learned? Or am I still spending too much time on things that don't matter... Time to take inventory and reevaluate.
1 comment:
I've gone back to read my old journals, hoping to learn from them, but mostly I learn what NOT to write now and what is actually interesting years down the road. Let's hope our children someday have something good to read after we're gone, right?
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