Ideas, Insights,& Intuitions

I have a 2-year-old 27″ Brand ‘O’ television set that weighs a ton, and an old Brand ‘E’ VCR that I wanted to connect. I already had a DVD player connected by S Video cables to that TV, and it works fine on the TV Aux 1 channel. But for my purposes, the VCR is the best way for me to record the few things that I would want to, and to play the recorded tapes that I have had for many years.

So when we extended my daughter’s ‘TW’ Cable at her house to my adjoining apt., I got out the instruction manuals for both the TV and the VCR, and tried to make it work according to what they said I should do.

The TV manual said I should set the TV/AV selection to Aux 1 to connect the TV to a VCR. This did not work, no matter what else I did. All I saw was a big black screen.

I also got conflicting instructions regarding whether the coaxial cable from the wall should be connected to the input or the output connection of the VCR. Since there was only one connection at the back of the TV, I could see that whichever VCR connection the wall cable was connected to, the other cable had to run to the TV from the other one. Somewhere I read a statement that it would be impossible to record or play if cables from the wall were connected to the “in” connection of the VCR. Well, they ought to know, I thought, so I connected the cable from the wall to the “out” connection, and the other one from the “in” connection to the TV. Then I tried to record and play.

The VCR did its job as it was supposed to do. I could see it working, but nothing was being recorded, and the picture I got in VCR mode was terrible.

So what was the reason for the problem here?

1.) I had connected the cables wrong?

2.) My VCR was too old/incompatible with the TV or was not “cable-ready”?

3.) The instructions were (OMG) wrong?

The last thing I was ready to believe was that the instructions could be wrong. Or at least misleading.

I consulted my daughter, who had had a similar problem with wrong instructions for her VCR setup. Seeing that I had followed all the instructions, and seeing that there was no way to do a channel setup on the VCR, we came to the (wrong) conclusion that my VCR was too old to work with my relatively new TV and a cable system that didn’t use a converter box (we didn’t know why.) We thought I would have to go out and buy a new VCR that was “cable-ready.” And I very nearly did just that, thinking I could give my VCR to someone with an older TV.

But first I emailed my son, the family techno-wizard, 2 time zones away, about the problem I was having. He promptly phoned me, and after he found out what equipment I had, he told me to connect from the wall to the “in” connection (like what else made any sense?) I put a tape in the VCR and he walked me through the process of finding out what I had to do to make it work. It turned out that I only had to tune the TV to Channel 3 if I wanted to play a tape. To record, I would tune to the channel I wanted to record from with the VCR. Then I could watch that same channel, another channel, or turn the TV off. When I was able to bring the timer programming menu up on the TV screen, I knew we had it made!

This was the way it should work, and always had when I had used this VCR with cable before! Once again we had been saved from making an unnecessary purchase and giving away a perfectly good piece of equipment, or paying a cable tech to come out. Thanks, son!

Carmike Theater 20 in my city had a hard time today. Showing “Pirates 3″ on 3 screens, “Shrek the Third” on 3 more screens, and an assortment of other popular movies on the rest of the 20 screens in the building, they were set to make a lot of money this Memorial Day weekend. One school had transported several busloads of children to the complex, buying out at least one theater. My adult daughter and I arrived just as the show was supposed to start, but found a long line at only one of the indoor box office windows open to sell tickets, and another long line of people wanting refunds at one other window. It seemed that the movie had stopped in one of the theaters and could not be started again, so those people were getting refunds.

Tickets were sold out for some of the showings and there were at least a dozen people ahead of us. We had 2 friends waiting inside Theater 6 who could not leave without forfeiting what they had paid for their tickets. We wondered aloud why the management had only 2 people working the box office windows. A little later, a man behind us began to shout at the people inside. “Hey, is there anybody else in there?” he yelled. “I want to see the manager!” Some people passed in front of us and went to the other line. “Hey!” the man shouted, “We’re not going to get in line again!”

It had begun to rain when we left home, and by now it was pouring outdoors. There had been a chance of rain, but no one expected this. We had brought our umbrellas, but the car was parked around the back of the building. We were all pretty well stuck. But finally we were able to buy our tickets and join our friends. The movie was just starting as we sat down…

 About 5 minutes into the show, the strobe lights came on, flashing painfully bright in our eyes. What now? Were they doing some kind of test? But it continued to flash and we had to shield our eyes. Then the movie stopped and there was some kind of announcement coming over the speakers. We saw that people were getting up and were leaving the theater, and finally we could make out that we were being told to leave the room and move towards the entrance of the building. Almost everyone did, but we noticed that a few people just sat down in their seats again, probably thinking it would be over soon and the movie would start again. Out in the hall the whooping of the evacuation alerts were sounding, but at no time did we see or smell any smoke. All we could smell was hot popcorn oil. But we followed orders and took the first exit to the lobby.

There we met theater staff who told us that they did not know what had set off the alarms, but we had to get out of the building. Outside the thunderstorm had worsened and wind was blowing rain into the covered entrance. We objected that we would be in danger of being hit by lightning if we went outside, and were allowed to stand inside near the doorway instead. Some people were saying that it may have been lightning that set off the alarms. But they could not restart the movies: the schedule had been totally disrupted, and they would just have to close down until the next day. I wonder how long those people sat in the empty theater before they realized that it was all over for the day?

Theater employees were working among the crowd offering refund vouchers or free admission on another day to those who had their tickets. I had stuck mine in my purse, as I usually did, but my daughter found that her ticket must have dropped onto the floor when she got up to leave. The manager gave her a refund voucher anyway, and took her name.

Outside there was a fire engine and the police, probably staying there to see that the children got back onto their buses safely and that no one started a riot. But no one was angry. The kids were excited, but orderly. They were probably texting their friends about what had just happened. Parents covered their little children with blankets and carried them to cars that were pulling up to the curb. One busload of kids pulled away and the rain began to let up a bit. So my daughter opened her umbrella and went to bring her car around so that I could get in without both of us having to make the long walk.

There was high water in some of the streets we had to take to get home, and we saw one car stalled with its flashers on. But we made it safely into the dry comfort of the garage. There are thunderstorms or showers forecast for the rest of the weekend and the first part of next week. We hope that the folks at the theater will learn to handle emergencies like this better than they did this time. If there had really been a fire, there would not have been enough trained people to handle a crowd of this size trying to get out.

I have never forgotten that particular moment in my freshman year of college when I auditioned for the part of the mother in G.B. Shaw’s “Arms and the Man.” We were reading a speech in which the character passionately describes the Bulgarian Army’s victory over the Serbs. Everyone had taken a turn with the first run-through, and I was not happy with my first reading. My voice had been too soft, and I knew it sounded as though I were indeed reading the lines and not delivering them.

Now the director ordered a second try, since we were more familiar with the character and the plot of the play. Determined to do at least as well as I thought I could in interpreting those lines, I read the speech to myself once, closed my eyes, and simply withdrew into myself for a moment. When it was my time to read, I could not believe the power with which that speech filled the room! Gestures, emotion, and perfect recall (at the time) of the lines! “Pour-r-ring over the hillside…and sca-a-attering the [something] [something] like chaffff!” I emoted.

When I finished, no one said a word, apparently as dumbfounded as I was. The audition did go on, and the director told us that we would be notified about whom he had chosen for each part. The next day, a girl, an upperclassman who had also read for the part, approached me. She was afraid that I would get the part, she told me, and she wanted it badly, since she was about to graduate, and she had never had the lead in a play. “Would you please let me have that part?” she asked. I really did not need to be in the play. I only wanted to work on it, doing makeup perhaps, so that I could stay in the Dramatic Fraternity, !QS. So I told her she could have it, since I had time to be in other plays. And I’d had my personal victory.

She got to play the mother in “Arms and the Man”, an important supporting role, if not the heroine, and she did well, probably better than I would have done in the long run. But I have wondered ever since then, where did that one terrific performance come from?

When I started my life on this planet, I had on a body suit that grew and changed to accommodate my internal development until when I was about 25, my insides and outsides appeared to match up. And I stayed that way for a long, long time, through the births of babies, various illnesses and injuries, and the tremendous burdens, insults, and deprivations that I have inflicted upon that body, until rather suddenly, it seemed, a mismatch began to occur.

The body suit began to bulge around the middle and had wrinkled, hanging flesh on the face, arms, and chest. It seemed to lose some of the hair on its head, and it began to grow whiskers on the upper lip and chin! Finally it lost all its color. I also noticed that the feet got bigger and the fingers got fatter. And no matter how straight I thought I was standing on the inside, the body suit had developed very poor posture and lost a few inches in height.

 Now I know I haven’t gained all that weight that is showing on the scales, since I don’t even eat as much as I used to back when I was 25. What I think has happened—and it has been such a slow and gradual process that no one has noticed yet (since everyone is thinking about global warming)—is that gravity has been increasing!!

Why else would it be so much harder for me to get up out of bed or out of my chair? Why else would I now need a wagon to carry my groceries from the car to the kitchen door? And why else would I get out of breath when I try to dance?

I see on TV every day that people pay through the nose to get their body suits fixed so that they match what they know they are on the inside. They have this surgery and that procedure, they do Pilates and aerobics, and they try this diet or that pill. They get hypnotized and they meditate. But somehow it all comes down to realizing that they will eventually have to trade that suit in on a newer model.

 Well, that’s not so bad, I guess. When’s the last time you heard of a car that carried you around for 80 years or more? I am going to try to respect this body suit a bit more, and maybe it will last until it just doesn’t fit anymore and I finally have to trade it in and start over.

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PS–I think my brain is shrinking, too, because information keeps escaping, but that’s another story!