Of Tangled Instincts

Growing up, Sundays meant church… It wasn’t a negotiation, it was the law of the house. Everybody put on their Sunday Best and off to church we went.

And Sunday meals were always the highlight of the day. We got to sit on the dining table for Sunday Breakfast which would have eggs, maybe liver or sausages and sometimes bacon and cheese. The best tea service would be taken out of the display cabinet as well as the dinner plates that normally stayed looked up except for Christmas, till my mum decided life was too short to not enjoy her finest china.

When I went off to boarding school, I came home for my first holiday a teenager. Suddenly I was curious about watching the movies in the 🔞no under 18 section of the video club, so I could have interesting stories to share with my dorm mates, when school opened. I had somehow grown to become the resident hostel storyteller—on weekend nights after lights out (that was 9pm) in the dark, I would whisper the stories from books and movies I had read/watched.

Naturally, they did not want to listen to stories about The Sound Of Music and other Rodgers and Hammerstein musical classics which I had grown up watching so of course to impress my school roomies, I needed to broaden my repertoire. First day weekend of the holidays I rented out a couple of movies from the local movie rental shop, and casually added a copy of Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone’s Basic Instinct to my pile of rentals.

The lady behind the counter checked out the cassettes and looked at the last one, then gave me “the eye”. I acted calm and met her gaze coolly, she didn’t scare me one bit, I had survived a term with boarding masters who beat the daylights out of you simply because your bedding was not folded to military precision, a centimeter out of place and for the rest of the week you couldn’t sit properly. “Nice try lady gimme my movie.” I paid for my stash of movies which was mostly warm and fuzzy wholesome family entertainment feeling like such an adult 🤡

Now how to watch Basic Instinct, that was the challenge. I tried staying awake until everyone else went to bed… but turned out no one wanted to sleep that weekend.

Then came Sunday… when the call for church came—I pretended to be unwell – muttered some inaudible excuse when it was time to leave. Soon as the car pulled out of the driveway I jumped out of bed and popped the movie into the VCR. (Remember those right or are you too young for my blog 😂)

Anyway imagine when I tried ejecting the cassette as the family car pulled into the driveway… and the ribbon got chewed.

That was the summer I learnt some of the finer workings of repairing a cassette with a broken ribbon. I manage to pull some MacGyver moves and with a bit of luck and sellotape on Monday I successfuly returned all the tapes I had borrowed

– Rewind before returning.

~B

PS I would have totally gotten away with it too, if the lady from the video club hadnt called my mum to discuss the questionable choice of videos her children were making 😂 Regardless, I had stories for days when schools opened.