by Melissa Strong

VHS tapes are tools for identity formation? Believe it. Browsing the aisles of the video store, selecting movies, and watching them with other weird smart kids shaped the person and movie lover I became. And because they were cutting edge during my adolescence and young adulthood, VHS and other analog technologies shaped my outlook on and continuing experience of the world. I may have been born close to the demarcation zone for millennials, but I firmly identify and relate with Generation X: I cannot be a peer to someone who did not experience the pre-digital era. Do you remember hopefully waiting to hear a favorite song on the radio? Did you attempt to record that song on your boom box as it played? Did you search the video store for a movie you had heard of, read about, and longed to see? And did you try to copy the movie onto a blank VHS tape so you could watch it again? If not, we will never understand each other.