{"id":370,"date":"2011-07-01T16:25:09","date_gmt":"2011-07-01T16:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/requitedarchive.wordpress.com\/?p=370"},"modified":"2021-08-04T19:21:02","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T19:21:02","slug":"home-videos-dont-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/2011\/07\/01\/home-videos-dont-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Videos Don’t Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"



\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Within an hour of meeting Thelma\u2019s mother, the VCR is humming. Thelma gathers bedding, curls herself on the couch. I sit in between her and her mom. Thelma warned me about mom\u2019s home video infatuation. I\u2019ve come to realize that I\u2019m the only one from my generation without these clunky, plastic relics. It\u2019s okay though. Home movies are for families with deadly secrets. If you watch 48 Hours: Mystery<\/em> enough, you start thinking people with home movies are the ones who end up getting murdered and show up on TV.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Home videos backfire. There\u2019s this kid who\u2019s really famous right now for being a floppy-haired teenager with crystalline teeth and cuddly eyes. He sings. There\u2019s this old video of him singing into a hairbrush. He\u2019s like twelve, and it makes him look so lame. Elvis never had a tape like that. However, if Elvis ever had told people he sang into a hairbrush at twelve, people would\u2019ve wept just thinking about it, thinking of the magic involved in that one moment. The idea is so much better than the image.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On the screen, Thelma is seventeen. She\u2019s onstage singing \u201cMaybe This Time,\u201d and her voice is ravishing. She doesn\u2019t look anything like she does now \u2013 ponytail, sweatpants, makeupless \u2013 but somehow older, more like she\u2019s been coached into womanhood. Thelma\u2019s mom gazes at the TV. She is trying to transport herself back ten years to Thelma\u2019s performance. Not only is she imagining turning back time, she\u2019s picturing herself inside her daughter\u2019s body, dreaming how it must have felt.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cAmazing,\u201d I say. Thelma\u2019s mom smiles, squeezes my knee hard.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Watching endless videos of Thelma being an extraordinary adolescent makes me self-conscious about lacking superior kid talents. Not only was I not an exceptional child, I have no regular stuff caught on tape to make up for it. But slowly it hits me. I can use the absence of recordings to my advantage.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I think about telling Thelma how I came up with the idea for The Truman Show when I was nine years old. I could tell her I used to pretend that cameras followed me everywhere and sold my every move and word to some television company in outer space. But that\u2019s totally true and so I know she won\u2019t believe it.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Then\u2026 an idea! This can be anything, I tell myself. What\u2019s something beautifully, profoundly contrary to who you actually are, something impressive in ways you couldn\u2019t possibly be but always wished you could?
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI was in a rock band!\u201d I blurt out.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWhat?\u201d Thelma exclaims. She comes unbundled from her blankets, lunges forward.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cRelax,\u201d her mom says. \u201cI\u2019d love to see footage. Tell me more.\u201d
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I breathe dramatically, stage-breathe. I close my eyes. Whatever I say will have to be sensational, cinematic. I need to take care, get it right, because I know whatever I say will live forever. Their eyes pan in on me like two upper bodies rigged to dollies.
\n

\n

\nSimon A. Smith<\/strong> writes and teaches English in Chicago, where he lives with his wife and a murderous orange tabby named Cheever. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Hobart, Quick Fiction, Monkeybicycle, Whiskey Island, PANK, Bound Off, Prick of the Spindle <\/em>and a few others. He likes it here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Within an hour of meeting Thelma\u2019s mother, the VCR is humming. Thelma gathers bedding, curls herself on the couch. I sit in between her and her mom. Thelma warned me about mom\u2019s home video infatuation. I\u2019ve come to realize that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[21968],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/384"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1959,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions\/1959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}