A couple of weeks ago, much to my chagrin, Chang and Angel stumbled upon a DVD on our shelf and made us watch it. I’m not even sure what this particular DVD was doing on our shelf in the first place. I think it technically belongs to the Parents, but at some point which I do not remember, we must have borrowed it from them. Why, I do not know, as I do not tend to enjoy subjecting myself to the kind of torture that is watching that DVD.
You see, it is a home video from the year of 1995. You know, the year of big hair, leotards, and stirrup pants. It was also the year I turned thirteen and suffered from all of the above. That was the year all of us kids got together with our childhood friends, Nicki and Dustin, and produced a play based on Adventures in Odyssey’s episode “The Vow.” For years, it had been our favorite radio drama, but this was the year we were going to turn it into our very own production. I, however, was entering the teen years, and it wasn’t necessarily “cool” to listen to radio drama anymore. My younger siblings hadn’t caught up with the trends yet and were still obsessed, so they spent months writing the scripts (and trying to understand what terms like “fade-away jumper” and “documentaries” were), building the sets, and rehearsing parts. Nicki and I were roped into playing the parts of Donna and Jesse and grudgingly went along with it. In the end, we invited our parents, grandparents, and a lonely neighbor down the street to our live performance.
In the moment of putting stuff like that together, you have no idea how humiliating it will be years down the road. The movie is probably not as embarrassing to The Brother, as he rocked in his Lakers Jersey, or to The Kid, who was five and Just. Plain. Adorable in his walk-on role. But for me, it’s one of those movies that makes me cover my face and watch through my fingertips due to my bad hair and oldschool fashions.
However, it is good for one thing, and that is comic relief. So, despite the fact that I said I never wanted anyone else to see this again, I gotta admit it is Highly Amusing and may be worth the humiliation I may suffer in order to share it with the rest of you. It won’t be winning any awards, but it always gives my family a lot of laughs every time we watch and reminisce.
Kids, don’t try this at home. Unless you want to be subject to blackmail at some later point in your life.
