Old Home Videos….Like a Visual Diary

I love it when I remember things during the day, don’t you? Hehe. That sentence didn’t come out the way I wanted it to, but I’ll elaborate. I was in the midst of work yesterday when I remembered that I have VHS tapes of home movies stored in my stereo case. This made me happy, as I have not looked at those videos in quite awhile. I could not wait to get home.

During lunch, I was able to look at one of the videos. It was taken back in 1994 when my mom and I visited my brother and his fiancée (they are married now and were the ones we visited in Canada). It was fun to see the disgusted look on my brother’s face whenever I’d aim the camera at him, and when I aimed it at my mom she would comically scowl at me, telling me to get the camera out of her face. You could hear her in the background when we went sight-seeing…”Tara, get a shot of this…And this too! Did you get the shot?” “Yeah, mom, I got it!” I also captured some exciting sheep on the video and told the camera and whoever would be watching the video years later, that those were, in fact…sheep. Also on the tape were a few shows I recorded from Comedy Central. It’s funny what commercials were aired wayyy back in the 90s and how much younger Jon Stewart from “The Daily Show” appeared.

Then when I got home from work for the day and after I settled down for the night, I watched another home video. It was of my infant nephew who is now 16, and our family was bowling at a nearby alley. Most of the time the video was aimed at my little nephew who didn’t have a clue what was going on around him. He was dressed in a little bear snow suit. Very cute. Then later on in the video my dad must’ve held the camera because I was caught on film bowling terribly. TERRIBLY! Oh man, each time he caught me on camera, the ball was rolling into the gutter. Only once did I see the ball knock down a few pins. I wanted to crawl into the TV and take over that lane and show me how to bowl. Not that I bowl that well now, but at least I have a better chance of knocking more pins down! Sheesh. It didn’t even look like I was trying!

Then I recorded my dog doing her “I have to go outside” dance. This was a bittersweet part of the film as my dog has been gone for awhile now. Anyway, I’d ask her if she wanted to go out, and she’d bark constantly and twirl in a circle. Then I let her out and she’d flee down the driveway, past our garage in the backyard and up to the backyard fence to bark at dogs in the park. I was happy to see our old house and yard again. That video was a keeper.

I also shot a video of myself during a sick day when I had a cold. I had just celebrated my 17th birthday a week before, too. I showed the camera the presents I was given. That’s entertainment. It doesn’t seem like I’ve changed much, but my God the glasses I had were HUGE! They were red-framed Sally Jesse Raphael glasses. Made me look all distorted and what-not. Hehe.

I’ll have to look at more videos tonight.

Do you have old home videos that you look at now and then?