Ancient Technology

My kids would have no idea what to do with this VHS tape if they found it. And I'm glad.

I've kept it up here in the loft space since before they were born, but they've grown up thinking DVDs are a boring and ancient technology so I don't think I need to worry about them coming up here and raking through my old crap.

I've made sure it looks as boring as possible, just in case. Black casing, no label. Well, the label was peeled off at some point and it's left behind that white residue in a jagged pattern. Reminiscent of a VHS tape from the 80s or 90s, taped and re-taped a thousand times.

It makes me nostalgic to come up here and look at all my older stuff. Video game cartridges neatly arranged in boxes, alongside old football medals and trophies, and even my first guitar. No strings, but all the stickers still intact. It's become somewhat of a ritual to look through all this stuff on my birthday. But the tape, well, that only gets fished out on special birthdays.

It used to be every year, until I was ten. I'd be plopped in front of the TV and my parents would hit fast forward for a few minutes and leave the room until the machine made a clunking sound. Then they'd come back and tell me I was such a big boy now.

On my 20th birthday, my parents told me the truth. They had adopted me at a few days old. I never found out who my biological parents are. Apparently their right to privacy overrides my right to know who my parents are. They left me at a hospital, with the VHS tape duct taped to the blanket swaddling me, and a note with instructions they had to take to a specialist at the university to translate.

Since then, I've watched it on each of my "decade birthdays". My 20th, my 30th, and today on my 40th. I took my parents' TV set with me when I moved out, and I've watched it on that ever since. It's a combination CRT TV and VHS on a trolley, like the kind that used to be rolled out in school when there was a rainy day. We had to shelter in the gym hall and everyone had to sit cross-legged and watch old movies.

That’s how I sit to watch my tape today. I pull the dust cover off the TV and trolley, and plug it in. It starts as it always does, with the source name in an 80’s font fading into view in the top corner, “VHS”. And then a few seconds later, fading out of view. I insert the tape. The tapes in this machine never played automatically. It waited for an instruction. I reached forward and hit fast forward, then sit back down quickly and easily into my cross-legged position.

The two triangles pop up in the bottom left corner, and I watch as vague scenes from my early 30’s play at super-speed on the TV. Moving out of my shared flat with my buddy, Tom. Moving in with my now-wife, Michelle. Parties. Decorating. Lovemaking. The birth of our first daughter. The car accident. The stillbirth of what would have been our first son. They whiz past. Flashbulb memories. The scenes distinct, but blurred, at the same time. Things I consciously remember, and things I’d forgotten happened to me.

I have tried to pause before to see things in more detail. To try and work out how it works. The footage ends up too grainy and stretched when it’s paused. Pressing play does nothing. Stepping forward frame by frame just gives you a series of stretched and grainy images. Better to watch on fast-forward as my last decade flies in before my eyes.

There’s always more crammed in at the end compared to the start. The two weeks in hospital before we got home with our second daughter a couple of years ago is the longest. We thought we would lose her. Two children who never lived to breathe may have been more than we could take. For a short time I thought she might have inherited my curse. But breathe she did. And it’s all here, being committed to tape somehow.

As the scenes speed past, I think about how, in my 20s, I never really knew what it meant to be in your 20’s, and what being “30s” felt like. I looked at people at work in their 30’s as actual adults who had things figured out. Then I turned 30, played the tape, and realised that they were just the same as me - trying to figure things out day by day. Now I’m going to have to work out what it means to be in your 40’s.

The last scene on the tape before it comes to a halt and clunks stop is this morning, waking up to a dreadful breakfast in bed, cooked by my kids. It’s of me eating the burnt toast and overly sweet black coffee. Opening small gifts that have too much sellotape securing them. It’s over in a heartbeat.

I pack up the tape and hide it back under the old trophies and put that box back in its place. The cover goes back on the trusty TV and it’s wheeled back to the back wall where it stays. I was encouraged to make myself scarce for the last hour to give Michelle and the kids time prepare my “surprise” party. But they’ve been yelling my name for a while now, so I carefully stretch out my legs, knees creaking, and start to head down to create new tape. This is my ritual and mine alone.

My kids would have no idea what to do with this VHS tape if they found it. And I'm glad.

Note: Corey McWalter shared an idea with me almost two decades ago about a boy who had to rewind a cassette tape every year on his birthday, but he wasn't sure what to do with it. This is my take on his idea.