When the video camera showed up under our Christmas tree a few weeks ago, there was great excitement all around. Everything instantly became a fitting subject for recording – people walking, people sitting, people making supper, people eating supper, people playing board games, people welcoming in a new year. Basically, boring, everyday life, now captured on videotape and somehow supposedly made interesting between the recording of it and the replaying of it over a colour TV.
But a problem soon became apparent. Once a person gets used to the magic of all this modern technology, he is forced to admit that the humdrum of day-to-day living doesn’t suddenly become an episode of TV sitcom or drama simply because it is being transmitted through the same medium as his favourite shows. And a few hours spent sitting on the couch watching video footage of yourself sitting on the couch, is more than enough to convince you it somehow doesn’t make sense to spend your present life watching your past life unfold in front of your eyes.
In fact, it begs the question: Are you living at all when you’re sitting in front of a box looking at images of things you did while you were living a week ago?
What I’m taking the long way around to say is that, well, the novelty of the video camera wore off in record time. After an initial flurry of activity, the little, black machine finally came to rest on top of the TV where it’s been pretty well ever since. Soon the wisdom of the investment began to be a nagging question. After all, a potted plant could have sat on the TV just as well at a cost of many hundreds of dollars less.
But all those doubts about the camera disappeared following an incident Tuesday night as once again I am reminded that scientists just invent the gadgets – it’s up to ordinary people to decide how they’ll be used.
Running up a stepladder in the basement of my Home of Perpetual Construction where I am into the eighth year of a multi-phase development project (sounds better than fixing up the cellar), I felt my head come into contact with the extremely sharp corner of a rectangular furnace pipe. (WARNING: Please press the mute button on your remote control for the next minute or so to avoid hearing the sounds which filled the basement following this collision.)
When the fog cleared, I found myself sitting on the basement steps holding a throbbing head which was oozing blood from a gash somewhere on top. Eventually, dabbing it with a pad soaked in alcohol, I sought to discover just how big a cut I had suffered. Should I get back to work, go the hospital for stitches or drive straight to the funeral home? What I needed was to somehow see the extent of my injury. But how?
I think you can pretty well put the rest of this together without my taking up much more of your time. I’ll go over it briefly. Soon I was sitting on the floor in front of my television set, examining a 26-inch-square, colour TV moving picture of the top of my head. Like a doctor looking over X-rays, I was able to point to my recently acquired wound, which looked much bigger as pictured through the camera with its zoom lens.
I also discovered other healed-over marks left by earlier fights I had lost with nails, two-by-fours and floor joists. In fact, I was shocked at the similarity between my cranium and pictures I’ve seen of the lunar landscape although missing at this moment was any sign of the Sea of Tranquility.
And what I learned that night through the wonder of modern technology is that what I really need at this moment in my life is not a high-tech video camera but a low-tech hard hat.
©1993 Jim Hagarty
