Nanny's Video Cassettes

When I was younger, my grandmother (affectionately or trailer trashingly called, Nanny) looked after me after school until my parents got home from work. She also watched me during summer holidays and school breaks. I use the term "looked after" quite loosely as I am sure the standards by which she "watched" us could be called into Family and Children Services today. She was a wonderful woman and loving in her own way, but was of a generation much like that of Stand By Me or Now and Then. My cousin and I could pretty much run wild so long as we didn't interrupt her "stories" ...read - Days of Our Lives. In fact, I do remember one summer looking for bodies in a nearby cornfield. No exaggeration.

On holidays, after she picked us up from our respective houses, we were sent outside until lunch time and then cast back out into the wild until 5 when we were taken home. She was lucky that I had instilled in me a tremendous sense of Roman Catholic guilt from an early age, otherwise I'm sure I could have got into a lot more trouble than I did anyway. In these days though, I did learn to become quite crafty and sneaky, partly to entertain myself and partly to continue to trick my grandmother into thinking I was an absolute angel (a falsehood she still believes to this day).

The worst days were when it rained. She lived in a nice retirement trailer (when I just state trailer, people immediately jump to thinking 8 Mile - F.O. Eminem - when in reality it was more like a cabin in the woods) with fantastic room to roam outside with wooded areas and cornfields. When it rained though...hell on earth. The trailer was small and not suited to children. In fact, I can't remember a single child's toy being kept at her house, even though she watched my cousin and I from the age of birth to our teens. I remember once asking to play a board game and I got a deck of cards and a cribbage board.

One thing she did have were dozens of video cassettes recorded from tv. Many of them were inappropriate for children (see above note on availability of children's toys) but the excitement was in the barely allowed ones she did let us view. I think from the age of 6 to 13, there were only 6 films I ever watched at her house. Ones I can still quote word-for-word now.

They were:

- Firewalker (starring Chuck Norris)
- The Three Amigos
- Last of the Mohicans
- Star Wars (only the first one)
- Top Gun
- The Bear (a film about an orphaned bear, shot with real bears. I had mass separation anxiety as a child, most likely stemming directly and solely from the viewing of this film)

I think you can begin to see how none of these were suitable for someone in my very young youth. I'm sure there was another one but I can't recall it, which probably means I didn't wear the tape out as much as I did with these ones. In fact, none of these films are ok for six year olds. I do remember the nightmares I had after first watching Last of the Mohicans (I was a sensitive soul) and I'm sure my mother does too...as she is currently reading this and cursing my grandmother's name to hell. I should probably mention Nanny was my Father's Mother, so I am certain my Mum is cursing her to hell frequently.

You can also probably see that none of these films were very popular in my age group around this time either. It was hard to relate to all the pretty blonde girls at school (partially because I was a Hungarian built like an ox) but I also could quote none of the Disney films to the level they could. Sure I had the movies to watch at my mum and dad's, but really when you have Firewalker playing on repeat for 6 hours a day in the summer, there really is no competition.

I wonder how I turned out as normally as I have when I look back on my childhood experiences. I probably can only thank my Mum and Stepdad for this miracle and their intense reconditioning of my personality on weekends and dinner time conversations. Writing this has re-peaked my interest in watching some of these movies, but I'm sure if I were to, I'd be bored within the first 5 minutes of viewing. I can't wait until I have small children, to fill their heads with images of tomahawks and hallucinations in the fire... not.