Think Twice

My dad has been digitizing all of our home videos lately. What. a. hoot. People (i.e. my siblings, cousings, and my SELF) are so much more interesting as little kids because little kids are so honest and unassuming. It seems like the older we get and the more we start to be aware of ourselves, the more pretentious and uninteresting we become.
And frankly a lot of things I have done were a lot better in my memory than they are on video. Watching myself perform in a "scholarship" pageant proved to be more than I could bear. If you are going to make that grand a monkey of yourself, I advise that you minimize the evidence for your posterity.
What did turn out to be the funnest to watch (for me) were the goofy plays that my family would put together and record. When I was a little kid (4 or 5) my dad's whole family put together a nativity and recorded it and it is riotously entertaining. And my family put on a laugh-yourself-silly Cinderella once, as well as a great ad-lib Snow white with my cousin Milly and my brother (now 18, then about 3) as the diaper-wearing prince. I think perhaps I could watch those indefinitely.
So be smart, do yourself a favor. If you have a video-recorder, don't just pull it out to record performances and parties. Capture the everyday riot that is life the very best that you can. In the end it makes for much better viewing. And there's no better use for a video camera than to make a cheesy home-made production. Magic stuff.