When my sister and her family visited from Seattle, they had packed plenty of gear to distract their young children: plastic bags full of small, hard toys with sharp edges we are still finding, usually in the middle of the night with our bare feet; decks of various juvenile playing cards such as “Rat-A-Tat-Cat”; books after books; and a portable DVD player with a postcard-sized screen, “just for the flight.”
I don’t know if they were shocked at first by our relative lack of stuff, but they came to appreciate the simple life we represented to them. At least they said they did. Maybe they felt like Harrison Ford when that Amish chick saves him in “Witness”.
They even made plans to get rid of their TV when they returned home. “We don’t really watch it all that much anyway,” they said.
I don’t know if they’ve done that yet, but as soon as they left, we ran to the supermarket and bought a portable DVD player.
“as they left, we ran to the supermarket and bought a portable DVD player.”
That’s how tribal traditions are lost.
Native: What’s that?
Visitor: We call it “radio.”
Native: Hmm…
And suddenly no one remembers how to do that dance their grandparents used to do.
We don’t have television, but these damned PCs all come with DVD players, and there’s a place that rents DVDs within walking distance. In fact, they give DVDs away with magazines here. (Do they do that everywhere? I’ve only ever lived here since DVDs came out.)
well we’re safe cause we’re signing up for a social dance class this fall.
What the h* is “social dance”? Homecoming-dance at the Red Cross?
Ballroom dancing. Waltz. Rhumba. *Tanzschule*.
yeah. hurrah for DVD players.
You went to a Supermarket? Why didn’t you go to the Hypermarket?
dvds of your grandparents dancing is the answer of course.
in our world it is all about the small plastic blow up pools of liquid serenity…my teenager however lives to get one of those tiny dvd players.
They give out DVDs in magazines here, eeksy… the latest was Kill Bill Vol. 1 in some cheezy men’s magazine.
And, um, I’m not telling how many DVDs we own. But then we’re very good capitalist pigs, we are. We’ve got lots of stuff (even a few smallish plastic toys).
We only watch movies on our home theater system, with the rosewood boxed gold coned speakers and the widescreen HDTV. This works out about the same as not having a TV but having a portable DVD player, probably, as movie theaters aren’t good enough any more, and regular TV (except for The Daily Show) doesn’t cut it either. We promise your kids wouldn’t be spoiled by it if you visited. Extra super (hyper) promise. C’mon.
I have only one true capitalist vice and it is Special Edition DVDs. If there is a regular edition and a Special Edition, even of a movie I’ve never wanted to see I somehow end up getting the SE.
My DVD collection was over 250 titles last time I checked, not including TV show boxed sets.