I started watching VHS

My Grammy's house is a place of wonder and comfort. It will always evoke a feeling of limitless

possibility while keeping me grounded by showing what was there before me. The big garden, the row of evergreen trees pushing back and back around a sea of dead pine needles. Geese squawking and meeting at last in the tall grass across the way. Bull frogs peeking up from the pond and not letting us seeing them, but making sound enough to let us know they're there. The last trip I took to see my Grammy we planted some zinnias, marigolds, and pumpkins. I asked about the peach trees that my Grammy said won't have a good year because of the late spring frost. We talked of travel over a dinner at a restaurant my Grampy used to love. I carried a heavy box downstairs to the basement for her. The smell of old books and hot weather baked wood hit me and the nostalgia of playing with match box cars down there as a kid came flooding back as if I never did grow up. My Grampy's old film was there, still, with his projector wall across the way. Smelling always of an almost oily residue from hot summers untouched, rolling out of a cold 2026 winter and thrust back into the heat again. How many years have gone by.

I begin to feel overwhelmed by the need to look at everything. Leave no photo album page unturned, all the saved children's books? Read them now. I see the old matchbox car ramps. I want to see if my old favorite car is still there even though this hobby of play has left me and I'm not part of that niche any longer.

There is a glint of old metal with dust caked onto some parts and not others that's catching my eye. Close to the old film projectors, but tucked away. A Sharp Linytron CRT television. Old reliable, but a new feeling of adventure that can't be brought to me by a new flat screen with plastic 'glass'. I realize I was around for giant boxy TVs that weighed more than I did in college, but this predated me in a way that was unexplored and exciting. Is there life in this tv, could I get it to work.

Grammy said I could take this baby home, so that I did.

It got power just fine and I needed to run around looking for an RF modulator that would hook up to an old VHS player that I coincidentally found at my other Grandma's house. After I had all the pieces, it took about 5 minutes with google to get picture and audio. Overcoming something so technologically minor with a TV that you'd look past in your parent's attic felt like I was doing rocket science. It got me thinking about how far we've strayed from the basic luxuries. I don't need the internet to operate my 1981 TV and VHS/DVD player. I don't need a channel guide or 3 remotes. I would consider being able to watch television and movies a luxury, but oh how simple it could've stayed.

I think the internet can be an incredible tool. I use it as a marketing tool for my small business, I use it for my full-time job that I love dearly. However, the ways it's effected media consumption and even reaching out to loved ones often leaves me feeling like a drone. A meaningless bot checked out of romanticizing what could more easily than not be a very artistic life. I say this because I think there is something precious and sincere about returning to a more analog era. I'm not saying to throw out your iPads and move to a cabin in bumble fuck Pennsylvania. I use my iPad everyday and no Grammy's basement TV will get me to stop. I only want to share my experience about how getting this old TV to work has made me think about the direction technology is headed and the media we consume. It is nice to leave the phone in the kitchen. Send a handwritten letter in the mail. Or, watch a VHS tape on a TV that you found in your Grammy's basement.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/3cb12c_6f355a40f86b41619a320eba7d962608/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

p.s. I don't care if this has typos or is grammatically incorrect, I'm not using AI.