One of the most exciting things that could happen when I was a child was my father bringing home a borrowed videocassette player. We had a little 13" black and white television with rabbit ears that could pick up three channels most of the time, if you were careful. Two of them usually showed the same thing, so there wasn't really much TV to watch, but a movie was something else. The average movie would run about double my usual daily allotment of TV with no commercials and no twiddling with the antennae.
Dad would bring the big yellow padded suitcase into the living room and go to work connecting this exotic piece of equipment to our TV. There can only have been a couple of wires to the TV and one to the outlet, so it can't have been complicated, but to me it was pure wizardry. The top of the machine would pop up to accept a cassette, and we were ready for an adventure.
As kids, we had no say in when this machine would visit our home and we had no choice in the movies we saw. We could watch what Dad brought or go to bed. I had friends with colour television sets, VCRs, cable vision and less supervision, but there was little sense that I was being deprived of anything. My parents generally made time in front of the TV into a sort of currency, so we could negotiate a trade in foregone viewing time for things they would have bought us anyway. I earned my first canoe paddle and sleeping bag this way, one month each.
As a child, my view of history was entirely static, so the idea that watching recorded films at home was something new, or that one day perhaps it would become completely ubiquitous didn't enter my head. Videos were rare, the machines to play them were expensive, and all I knew was that getting to watch Herbie the Lovebug's black and white antics was the very definition of a treat. If the stars aligned just so, there might even be popcorn and half a can of soda to go with it.
Fast forward 25 years and I can stream Netflix on my phone any time I want. My TV is 6 times bigger than the old black and white model, remote controlled, highly defined, and rabbit ear free. I still have a VCR somewhere, but it is unnecessary. There is a little black box that gives me access to just about any movie I could think of to buy, borrow, or rent. I do hope I can always hear my five year old self having his little mind blown that we get to watch a movie tonight, no matter how easy it is.
