Watching One's Childhood Videos (Ep. 19)

Episodes Description: In this episode, Kevin talks about the strange feeling I got when I watched my old childhood videos recently.

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Transcript:

Hi and welcome back everyone. So..the other day I had my parents transfer some old home videos from cassette tapes to a digital format. So now I can view them online and on my computer. 

These videos were from when I was around 9 years old to 10 or 11 years old. So, I am almost 39 now…that means around 30 years ago. I can’t believe it has been that long…and that I am this old! Haha..

Okay, so yeah, I wanted to talk about the experience of me watching those videos again after such a long time.  I must say, watching yourself as a kid on a video is a totally different experience than looking at old photos of yourself.  Looking at old photos just tells part of the story…and they say a picture is worth a thousand words…but then a video is thousands of pictures stitched together, so then a video must be worth millions of words. And yeah, the feeling is quite different. A photo is like…oh yeah, that was me, wasn’t I cute.

But then when you watch a video of yourself, you can understand your personality more at that time…and see what has changed… and what hasn’t. And the weird feeling I get watching them is that it is familiar, yet so strange. Maybe that is partly due to me not having a great memory. I am sure that most people can remember their childhood better than I can…at least I assume so…because I can’t really recall that many episodes of my childhood. I only can remember really important events that occurred…like getting stung by bees, or going to Disney World. Or I have other notions of me playing with certain toys that I owned, or going to my friend’s house to play outside in their backyard. Things like that…but the memory is very blurry…very fuzzy.  I can’t recall any one particular event very clearly. Maybe this is most people, though. I don’t know…

So anyway, when you watch yourself in action as a 9 year old, it is strange because you can hear yourself saying and doing  everything you said and did…and the memory is then recent again…from that moment you watch it. So then a new yet old memory gets implanted into your mind and certain parts of your childhood become clearer again.

Watching the videos also made me think about how short life is…haha. I am not getting melancholic, I promise. But it’s like…man, childhood is over now…and I can’t go back. And then you realize you can’t even go back 10 years ago, when you were just a younger adult, and then you realize how brief this existence is…I wish I could say it made me more appreciative of life and the people in my life, and make me value living in the present more…but I’d be lying if I said it had such an impact on me.  The idea of ‘not taking things for granted’, by the way, is another idea I will talk about in a future episode..

Anyways,…I don’t know…maybe I am rambling. But I wonder If any of you listeners out there have watched videos of yourself as a child recently..If so, please comment and let me know how you felt. It is somewhat inscrutable to me…Despite me saying before that a video is worth a million words, I can’t find that many to describe how I felt.  For now, I’ll just conclude that, once again, it is familiar yet strange.

Okay, that is all for today, thanks as always for listening!!