29 June 2011

Maybe this will just never change.

When the powers that be at Costco sent out their most recent batch of coupons, one of them was for converting VHS to DVD. I tore that one right out and stuck it in my wallet.

I had a few videos I'd been meaning to turn a la DVDs for a while, and every time I saw them on my closet shelf I'd feel a twinge of concern they'd get ruined before I had actually got moving on it. VHS are so comparatively fragile now, and I don't know where I'd get a VCR to show my progeny this historical footage. The most important one was of my Fall 2003 sky dive adventure. On a serious whim, some of my besties and I went sky diving in Ogden. The extra fee for this excursion's videotape was not kind to my coed budget, but easily justified because if I was going to do this, I wanted to be able to reflect on my bravery (recklessness) as often as I saw fit. I wanted to see what my own body plunging through 13,000 feet of cloudy sky looked like. And, now that I'm a mother I can see I'd go out of my mind if J ever did this to me, but I didn't tell my parents I was going to do it, and the plan was to "tell" them by showing them the video when I went home for Thanksgiving. They just about had a hernia. I haven't watched the video since 2004, I think, and was excited to both have it reliably preserved as well as watch it again.

So a few weeks ago I shimmied into Costco with a couple of home videos, and yesterday I picked up my precious DVDs.

This morning I watched the sky dive and my skin crawled, I rolled my eyes about 30 times, and I didn't finish the video. My hair was awful -- why didn't someone tell me?? I thought I was pretty stylish back then. I didn't hold still for a minute, I was just bouncing around like a little 21 year old bunny rabbit, and my voice sounds so high pitched. It was obnoxious to watch.

Maybe it is just always awful to see yourself on camera. Maybe I'm remembering that I was really an 18 year old until I was 25. *Side note: When I was 23 I almost moved to Palo Alto, which meant I would have met law-student Jeff 3 years earlier. I ended up going on my mission instead, but Jeff always teases me that if I'd listened to the REAL spiritual promptings I would have gone to Palo Alto. I really think that as much fun as Jeff and I would have had in the Bay Area together, I was so immature before my mission, he wouldn't have liked me AT ALL. :) End side note.*

Either way, it has reminded me anew that no matter how "ok" I think my hairdo is, I need to have a stylish professional caring for it, because I no longer trust my own opinion. Man, I really thought my hair was awesome in 2003.

And this is why I like to dress sort of preppy. It's just safer. It doesn't look as horrific 8 years later.

And when I'm on camera, I need to not sound so shrill.

And I'm never, ever showing that to my posterity. I really don't care if it gives me street cred, it would be a total free pass for our kids to go do something dangerous. Eek.

The End.

2 comments:

[AnnieR] said...

A personal anecdote to your side note. As I'm sure you're aware Go was "Art History Boy" to me for two whole years before I officially met him. No matter how many times I sat RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM in Art History and turned around to chuckle along with the jokes he and his brothers and friends cracked about the fat naked ladies we were looking at, he didn't give me a second look. I'm going to push aside my the presence of my Freshman 15, nay, 20, (or maybe because anyone desperately trying to wiggle their way into your inner circle is perhaps more than slightly off-putting?) and just say that it was Heavenly Father kindly putting blinders in front of his baby blues all those times I tried to get him to notice me, (then introduce himself, ask me out, fall in love with me, marry me, father my children,) for if we would have met in art history my freshman year, I am quite sure that we would NOT be married. I was a mess. Thank goodness things work out the way they're suppose to and not the way we want them to because we as individuals are always blind to our own current states of ridiculousness.

Alisha said...

Hey, I liked your hair in 2003. Do you remember that drive we took post my mission, pre yours? It was good hair.