Toledo Tales

By Billy Pilgrim, Toledo Tales Rogue Editor

Baxter, inconsolable after the maddening DVD incident

Toledo native Margaret Baxter has always prided herself on being able to “keep up with the grandkids.” She eats well, walks four mornings a week, and completes the Toledo Blade crossword puzzle each day to keep her mind sharp.

But last night, as her three grandchildren wistfully dozed on the couch, Baxter found herself in a moment of technological reckoning when she couldn’t figure out how to rewind a DVD of Disney’s The Little Mermaid.

“You know, I pushed every button on that machine until the cows came home,” Baxter lamented as she wiped pollen from the lenses of her bifocals. “But I wasn’t about to put that movie back in its case without rewinding it. Wouldn’t be right. So I stood for an hour until my bad knee started to go. I swear, if Tom [her deceased husband of 37 years] were still alive, by George, he would’ve had that blasted thing rewound in a jiff. The man was a saint.”

Baxter asserted that her video illiteracy was not a function of her age, but rather a result of an increasingly digitized culture that has forsaken family values and quality craftsmanship.

“Back in ‘78, I think it was ’78, Tom and I bought our first and only laserdisc player. It only had three buttons, and lasted twenty one years,” Baxter nostalgically reflected. “Had Tom not fallen on it when he had his heart attack, I’d still show the little ones The Sound of Music. It was Tom’s favorite. Sure, it spanned six discs, but all that inserting and ejecting kept us honest. Mark my words, all this Googling will be the end of us all.”

Labels: DVDs, family values, Googling