Tuesday, July 17, 2001

Rated Gee

While helping my mother clean out some closets and cupboards this weekend, I ran across a box of old reel-to-reel tapes and a few loops of 8mm film. I hadn't seen them in probably 15 or 20 years.

For about two weeks, when I was three or four years old, my parents had the use of a home movie camera, borrowed from a friend or relative, I can't exactly recall. And for those two weeks, my father became an auteur, directing me in miniature epics, his voice heard on the film's scratching soundtrack exhorting me to "dance for the camera" or "wave to mommy" or "do a flip."

I remember sitting mortified as an awkward adolescent when these cinematic pearls were unspooled from visiting family members or friends. No one enjoys being a captive audience for a tour through their baby album; it's even less fun when the album is a herky-jerky motion picture reminder you have gained no grace or elan despite having graduated to long pants.

Having sorted through the items headed for the recycling pile, a late summer tag sale or the charity thrift store, we set upon the task of restocking the closet with keepers. Before I returned the box of movie memories to the very top shelf, Mom reminded me to label it for posterity.

Future biographers and historians, please note: There is, on the upper shelf of the large storage closet adjacent to my mother's favorite sitting room in my ancestral home in New London, Missouri, a small cardboard box bearing the legend "Bradsploitation Films, circa 1971".