Be Kind, Rewind. Or Face Eternal Judgment - The 80's #9

 Friday night in the 80's was a military operation.

It required speed, stealth, an unwavering commitment to personal and family values, and a membership card.

The battlefield was Blockbusters...

...where hope went to die.

And die brilliantly under fluorescent lighting and inside empty video cassette shells.

An entertainment starved schlub couldn't simply rent a movie on demand in the legwarmer years. There was no such beast as streaming. But there was this entity known as scarcity. Maybe better known as supply and demand.

It was definitely a mood maker. All foul.

If the copy of the movie you wanted was gone, it was gone. The poor teens working their after school jobs behind the counter tried to do their managers proud by saying the movie was "temporarily unavailable."

Lies! And we knew it!!

The tape you wanted was taken by some other schlub's family. Because they were quicker, stealthier, or more aggressive in their task handling. Or they knew people; had connections in the underground video rental world.

Or maybe they simply didn't have to wait for one member of the family to get their "medicinal" bottle of wine first.

Whatever. There was little to no chance that other family would rewind the thing properly.

Walls in Blockbuster were lined with empty cases. Tombstones on shelves, epitaphs were the titles of movies you wouldn't be seeing this weekend.

"That one's out," was the most often spoken expression from 1985 to 1989. It meant the military exercise of video choosing was shifting.

Abort mission! Adjust expectations! Lower standards immediately!

Of course, the tapes themselves were mysterious things. Surprisingly heavy yet possessing a certain fragility. VHS tapes were almost living beings. They could be eaten. They could snap.

They might contain the wrong video altogether and suddenly movie night becomes an unexpected lesson in human anatomy... in the few seconds before Mom screamed and threw the remote at the tv.

But the real sin - the war crime, even - was failure to rewind. And the label was clear on every single cassette cover:

Be kind! Rewind!

It was a moral code, not a suggestion. Returning an unwound tape was subject to a fee and the judgmental looks of fellow video store patrons; basically a public confession of selfishness.

Rewinding was hard work. Sitting there watching the counter move in the same direction as the doomsday clock felt wrong somehow. Some people bought separate machines whose sole purpose was to rewind the tapes faster.

Automated laziness had its start in the video rental arena. And those people were heroes... or cowards. Remains unclear.

Yet, there was true beauty in the whole process. When you decided to watch a movie as a family, you went out together and chose one. And you did watch it together. Even if it was bad - real bad - you collectively lived with the choice.

Options were limited so commitment mattered. We came to understand values like patience, responsibility, and the cost of convenience.

But also to rewind. Those fees were bogus.