As I looked through an advertising circular recently, something caught my eye. I didn\u2019t particularly need the item, but knew I had to share the information with the rest of the family.<\/p>\n
Someone \u2013 I don\u2019t remember the store \u2013 had a DVD player on sale for $20. I drifted into old man mode and remarked that I could not believe a DVD player could cost so little even though these kinds of deals have existed for a few years now.<\/p>\n
I guess the deal caught me by surprise because already have a DVD player. Since we don\u2019t even watch them very often, I hadn\u2019t checked out prices on new players for a while.<\/p>\n
That didn\u2019t stop me from thinking back to a time when buying a device to consume media didn\u2019t cost less than a tank of gas. Of course, this notion amused our teenage daughter who finds discussions of things like typewriters and record players and VCRs a constant source of comedy.<\/p>\n
So we started talking about the time when my wife and I bought a VCR together. We had been dating for less than a year. Our mutual love of television spurred this decision, quite possibly the first major one in our relationship.<\/p>\n
Yes, we\u2019re the kind of people who mark \u201cjointly buying a VCR\u201d as a major moment in our life together. Deal with it.<\/p>\n
This was sometime before the spring of 1993. I don\u2019t remember exactly when we made the purchase, but I do know that we used the machine to record the final episode of \u201cCheers\u201d that spring. I worked nights back then so could not guarantee that I would see this important event.<\/p>\n
We approached the decision very rationally and figured that we could easily justify the cost, which was significant back then for two folks not making a lot of money.<\/p>\n
If we had a VCR, Maria could catch up on shows if she fell asleep in front of the TV. Then I could come over to her apartment the next day to watch the shows I missed while working. Better yet, we could watch our favorite programs together on the weekend if we wanted.<\/p>\n
So we went to some big electronics store in Lancaster and took a leap of faith. I cannot stress how much this signified the strength of our relationship for me. If I made a TV commitment with someone, it was pretty serious.<\/p>\n
The whole thing worked out wonderfully in the end. I couldn\u2019t have written a better script. Oh, yeah, Maria and I stayed together too.<\/p>\n
I have no idea whatever happened to that old VCR. In fact, we don\u2019t even have one in the house. I thought of that recently as I came across a box of old video tapes while looking for something else in the basement.<\/p>\n
I managed to sell the last VCR we had at a yard sale a couple of years ago. That meant I had nowhere to turn to look at those tapes, some of them which had no identification as to what they contained.<\/p>\n
I guess I could always go to the store and buy a new one. That wouldn\u2019t take as much of a commitment as it did 20 years ago, but it would probably cost more than a DVD player.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I looked through an advertising circular recently, something caught my eye. I didn\u2019t particularly need the item, but knew I had to share the information with the rest of the family. Someone \u2013 I don\u2019t remember the store \u2013…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-columns","category-tv","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-3-id","wpcat-7-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2192,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191\/revisions\/2192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}