Lights, Camera and Action

Picture this.

A young boy aged 6-7 years. Its a Saturday afternoon. The boy is wide eyed and excited. He sits in the back seat behind the passenger side, The young boy catches his mother smiling at him through the rear vision mirror, he throws her the biggest grin back.

"Mummy," the young boy says, "are we nearly there?"
The young boy kicks the front passenger seat with his toes, then swiftly swings them back like a pendulum, bluntly hitting
the heels of his feet at the bottom of his seat, whilst doing that over and over he draws invisible pictures into the back of the
passenger seat, The current masterpiece being that of a lion playing with a shark near a medieval castle with knights and
kings in the background.

“Soon baby.” the Mother says “we just passed the paint shop.” her eyes looking at the young boy in the mirror, “another 5
minutes”.

More excited than before the young boy checks his shoes, pants, shirt. Dressed in his weekend best he smiles with pride. Every Saturday calls for his weekend best, because every Saturday he gets to go there.

As The radio pumps Always by Bon Jovi the young boy tries to know the words with meaning far to advanced for him to comprehend. He looks out the window and watches as the homes, buildings, Mcdonalds, Pizza hut, Hungry Jacks and parks Drift off as he passes them by, they don't interest him today, they barely warrant a second thought because beyond the next corner lies the destination causing such excitement.

The destination being. The young boys local video store.

The young boy is me circa 1995. Renting Videos was my favourite thing in the world to do, and every Saturday for pretty much my entire life I have done this. I've been a member of many different video stores all over the west side of Melbourne, some good, some bad. I remember some vividly, and others not so much. I would often fantasize about living in a video store, my bed being situated in the middle with racks of videos surrounding me.

Renting movies has been a big constant in my life. Now after many years, I work in a video store. The pay is terrible, and like any job it has its times where I hate everything about it. But when I walk past the children's section and see the favourites from 1995 I smile, because if my younger self could see me now, in all my non glory he would be so excited.