#(vintage!)

On Tuesday I realized the Thursday lesson plan included a 20-minute video about a clinical breast exam that existed in only 2 places- online, and on a VHS tape. (It was the same video. It was very clearly the same video. It had absolutely been pulled directly from that 25+ year old VHS tape to be put online.)

As there is exactly one (1) compatible computer/projector combo in the building, and it was already reserved for another class, I had to find a way to play a VHS tape.

Fortunately, the building might only have one projector, but it has three of these bad boys:

Which is, probably, why so many of our materials are on tape.

So VHS it was.

But even that was fraught with challenges. I am a child of the 90s and mastered the VCR as a 4-year-old, leaping with delight when a similar setup would be rolled into my 1st-through-5th-grade classrooms.

I wrestled with this monster for a solid 90 minutes. First, while all the components technically worked (despite being over 27 years old) they lacked the correct cords to connect the TV with the VCR (true of all three carts, for some unexplained reason). Yes, this VCR was old enough that it did not support the triple A/V- style connectors the TV had hanging off it. It did support an antenna cable, but the TV itself wouldn’t recognize the input, and once that was tried, I was out of cables.

Fun fact- tech support no longer supports VCRs. Which is apparently still an oversight in the year of our lord 2019.

I think it is only a small spoiler to note that the above pictured machine ate the VHS I needed in short order and refused to give it back (the bastard) and I ended up getting everyone to crowd around my personal laptop, which turned out to be not so bad.

I leave you today with this charmingly antique netflix ad (c.2003) located on a DVD player from the same year: