Allyson Johnson

A Piece of My Mind: The Dinosaur in my Den

I gained a few pounds on my recent vacation, so I opened the cabinet underneath our TV monitor, found  my VCR tape of “Jane Fonda’s Low Impact Workout” and thrust it into my VCR. (I have a DVD player, but the golden age of video workouts was the VCR age, and I have kept my machine and my video tapes through the era of DVDs and the era of streaming.  I know, I might as well say I keep a brontosaurus as a pet.) Thirty-five minutes of constant motion later I finished the last steps of the cooldown, hit STOP on the VCR, and then EJECT. 

The tape cartridge came halfway out, then stopped.  I pulled.  Clearly the tape had not released properly; I could feel it give.  I tried to push the tape cartridge back into the machine. No go – there was a barrier.  Slowly and carefully I worked the tape cartridge out of the machine.  A loop of tape, wrinkled and sagging, but unbroken, dangled from the cartridge.  I managed to work the tape back inside where it belonged, crossed fingers, and put the cartridge back into the machine.   It worked – a bit blurry, but this time it ejected with no problem.  Whew! 

Two days later, still angry with my scale, I found “Kathy Smith’s Instant Workout” and plopped that cartridge into the VCR. At first the tape was streaky and jittery, but then it cleared up. Forty minutes of toning and low impact aerobics later I hit STOP, then EJECT. 

Again, the tape cartridge came halfway out, then stopped.  I pulled.  Again the tape had not released properly; I could feel it give.  Slowly and carefully I worked the tape cartridge out of the machine.  This time, the dangling tape was broken.  No more “Instant Workout.” 

In anticipation of the worst, I inventoried my VCR collection: Several favorite Jane Fonda workouts (which I used to have to hide from my Viet vet brother), several Kathy Smith workouts (longer and more strenuous than Jane’s), several little-used yoga tapes from my yoga period (I was more flexible then),a couple of old movies, some souvenir video tapes from the Lick Observatory, from the National Park Conservancy, from a cruise that we ended up not taking, the stirring“16 Days of Glory”  from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics,– all forgettable or replaceable.  

But then there are the recordings. The tape of coverage of 9-11 as it happened, which we replay every September lest we forget.  My son’s extra credit project from high school.  My son’s appearance on local TV as a burrito expert. A performance put on by our church of “Amahl and the Night Visitors” in which my husband had a singing role. The funeral of an old family friend. My parents on vacation with friends from their childhood. These could not be replaced or updated via Amazon. 

The next day I decided I would say goodbye to each tape by playing it one last time, resigned to its breaking on ejection.  I danced through Jane Fonda’s “Lean Routine”, rewound and ejected with no problems!  Maybe the dinosaur has a few more ages to live through after all!  But an attempt that evening  to watch a travel video failed – lots of snags, black screens, interruptions.  Not dead yet, but in its death throes, I decided. There are services which, for a ruinous charge, will transfer my irreplaceable memories to DVD.  I will have replaced my brontosaurus with a wooly mammoth, but my memories may last until the next Ice Age.