Recently I arrived home, worn and tired after 11 hours straight at the office. This is my new life: the 10 hour work day, which inevitably means 11 hours away from home; 11 hours away from my girls; merely 45 minutes on each end of the day to treasure them. Most days my arrival is great with gleeful shouts of "mommy, mommy, mommy's home!"
But today was different, today, instead, my 3 year old burst in to tears. "The Teletubbies store is gone" she wailed. And on and on she sobbed. I was bewildered. What was she so upset about? I tried to comfort her, we could certainly buy some Teletubbies videos if that was the matter. But really, it wasn't.
"The Teletubbies store" was a local video store. It was not some Blockbuster, or Hollywood video, but a small, local store. It was just a few blocks from our house. It was old style, they looked up your account by your phone number, and they only needed 7 digits. It was a reminder of an era past, where the local merchant was normal, and large chains were a novelty yet.
Growing up, I had a friend whose parents owned such a video store in our home town. It was the only video store, and they looked up your account by your phone number, and they only needed 4 digits. It was the place to go on a Saturday night. I remember how excited I was to go with my dad and establish our account when we got our first VCR. It was before we got cable television and it felt like the world was at our fingertips.
"The Teletubbies store" felt a lot like that store did. Even though we live in a city, it had a small town feel to it. On Saturdays you could borrow 2 family videos for a week at no charge. That' s how my girls came to call it "The Teletubbies store". We would often take a walk over to the video store on a Saturday and borrow videos. Their favorites quickly became the Teletubbies. They would ask to watch those videos all week. And it was a kind of a ritual for us. Not an every week ritual, but a regular ritual of visiting the store and delighting in the fact that some things in life still were free.
I had noticed the large signs in the windows for a few weeks selling DVDs cheap. "No big deal" I thought, they're just rotating stock, making room for new videos. The thought crossed my mind that they might close, but "nah, they're a staple in the neighborhood." But apparently I was wrong. Our beloved video store fell victim to rising rents, the trendiness of our location, and perhaps worst of all: Blockbuster.
And I must admit I am guilty myself. I subscribe to the mail delivery DVD service that conveniently drops DVDs in my mailbox, and doesn't charge me a late fee when I forget to return it for a few weeks. Maybe if I had just gone to "The Teletubbies store" a bit more often, they would still be there. In the days that have past, every now and again she'll emit a sniffle and a tear as we pass the shell of a video store. It's gone. She loved it for what it was. It was a joyful memory for her. I hate to see her mourn. I realize she is agonizing over something that is truly wrong in our culture. The small is replaced by the large. It happens in retail, in restaurants, in grocery stores, in clothing stores, in food portions, in automobiles, in houses. Everything small in our world is being bulldozed to make way for something bigger. And this small child already knows it is tragic.
