Janet came in with 16mm film reels she stole from her mother’s home.

Sidetrack: We are confidante to a lot of family film thefts. The thefts are necessary as many older parents are extremely nervous about letting precious irreplaceable film reels – 8mm, Super 8, or 16mm – out of their home. So their adult children have to ‘steal’ them for a while to bring them to our store to have the old home movies transferred to DVD.

Back to Janet. She said the 16mm film reels had videos of her parents wedding and the many trips they took early in their marriage. They had met at Cornell. And Janet had with her a CD by the Cornell Glee Club: Songs of Cornell that she wanted to be added as background music to the film. I thought that was so sweet, so clever.

I am very touched by the clever ideas people have to make something extra special for their loved ones. I give brownie points to adult children – just for bringing in their parents’ old home movies to turn into gifts for them. But when they put in that extra thought, like Janet, to find a CD with songs from her parents’ alma mater to be put in the background, I am just so touched I want to do the service for free for them. But you know I can’t.

I am really looking forward to this finished DVD. With songs names like these: Big Red Team, Fight for Cornell, Give my Regards to Davy, Cornell Champions – this is going to be one awesome 50th anniversary gift for Janet’s parents. She’d better include a box of tissues in the gift bag.

If Cornell is your alma mater, and you are nostalgic for the Big Read Team, you can hear these songs here: Songs of Cornell Page

I shouldn’t have left him alone. I should have known better. That was risky. But I had a line up of customers waiting for me, keeping them waiting while he took his own sweet time wasn’t right either. So I walked away and left him alone.

He had walked into the store like many others: “I’d like to watch these Hi8 tapes, want to see what they are before I spend money transferring them to DVD.”

So I set him up at a station with a Hi8 tape player. He must have had a dozen tapes, some Sony Hi8, some 8mm tapes, a couple of VHS tapes. When he saw other customers come in the store, he said, “You take care of them, I know how to press the Rewind and Play buttons.” So I left him alone.

After I took care of the line of customers, I came back to check up on him. It couldn’t be more than 15-20 minutes.

He was hunched up, head bowed, hands rubbing the bridge of his nose. He seemed startled to see me, obviously his videos had taken him somewhere else, a long ago place, a long ago time. And he was crying. His face was a blend of pain and pride. I could barely make out his words, “She used to be so little.” I looked at the video player and I saw a chubby, curly haired, toddler waddling through the screen, dragging a toy duckie.

I said, “Well, I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have blinked. That’s what happens when you blink – they turn into teenagers. You blink twice, they are young adults.”

Turns out, his daughter is still 13. Still lots of opportunities to enjoy her before he’ll be saying in a few years, “She used to be a teenager …”.

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Samir*, a youthful looking, dark-haired man of Indian descent, came into the store with a bag of 8mm film reels cans. “I’m here to view these film reels”, he explains.

We set him up on a desk with a film projector, and gave him a 10 minute demo on how to playback his Super 8 film.
Samir took the boxes of reels out of the bag, some had labels, some didn’t, some look very beat up, some in pristine film boxes.

I asked Samir if there was an event, a wedding, or a family reunion that prompted him to transfer his old home movies to DVD. Samir said, “Nope. I am turning 40, I’m looking for my father“. Samir went on to explain his father had passed away when he was 4. He didn’t have any videos of him except for what’s on the film. Turning 40 raised a desire to connect with this person who had gone away and missed a chance to see a child grow up.

He carefully looked through each and every film reel. 40 minutes later, “I found him!” I came over and looked, I wish his own family were there to share this special moment with him. As he cranked the film projector with his hand, images of a birthday party flew by. A 2 year-old boy posing with his cake, a beaming father behind him, hand on his son’s shoulder. In a faraway place, Pakistan, he said, and in a far-away time, 36 years ago.

* Our customer stories are real, but the names have been changed.

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