Did you catch the dilemma at the end of my last post? What, you didn’t read my last post? I’ll refresh you…I would decide what to do with a stack of VHS tapes from a few of my college basketball games. First let me say, that I don’t own a VCR anymore and no, I don’t want to buy one for $30. When our last one broke a few years ago, I joyfully purged our collection of VHS tapes with no regret.

While I was shredding this pile of financial stuff in the basement (I’m not under indictment, but the post about the filing cabinet made me notice the huge pile of bank statements and old checks on top of it) I was thinking about what to do with the tapes.

Another thing you should know is that I’ve had these tapes for more than 5 years and haven’t watched a minute of them. I attended an alumni luncheon and my coach was decluttering her office. I thought my kids would want to see me play and we’d have hours of entertainment viewing them. “Pop some corn kids, it’s W&J vs. Hiram tonight!” Surprisingly, the kids aren’t clamoring to watch them.

I was imagining some conversations like, “Who wants to watch an old basketball game?” (crickets  chirping in the background) or

“Hey guys, I just spent the better part of this year transferring my old basketball games onto DVD so if you want to stay up to watch TV, you have to watch me playing basketball.”or

“Hey mom, what are you watching?” “Just one of my old basketball games” “Cool, can I watch?” “Sure”………….”Do you do anything in this game, I mean besides just run around, like do you score any points?” or

“Gee mom, you weren’t that good.” or “Gee mom, do you sit on the bench for the whole game?” or “What were you guys wearing?” (I played when the uniforms were still tight and polyester).

Needless to say, I pretty much decided that my children would have a full childhood even if they never watched one of my games. But then I was thinking, maybe I should just keep one and they can decide for themselves if they want to keep it and they could show it to THEIR children some day, Well, then that started a whole ‘nother conversation in my head….

“Hey kids, want to see Grandma playing basketball in college?” “Eww, NO!”

In all seriousness, I’m really not that hard on myself. I had to ask myself whether I’d give anything to watch a video of my dad playing one of his games in high school or college. He has some great stories about nail-biting games at a time when the whole city cared about who won. But the answer was “not really”. I have an image in my mind of him dribbling down the court and scoring. Though I have no doubt that watching him on video would meet or exceed that fantasy, what I’d give anything for is to BE at one of his games-but that can’t happen. (I’m hoping that heaven will have something like that in store for me).

The truth is, I’ve played my games. I had a great time but I’ve decided to make room in my cabinets for the present and the future. I have terrific memories of playing and being on the team and holding on to a pile of unwatched videos isn’t preserving those memories for me, so, I’ve decided to let them go.