As a child, the excitement of walking to the local video rental store was unmatched.
I, like most of our readership, am of the era where finding a movie to watch on a Friday night was much more involved than it is today.
First, there was the trip to the video rental store – in Palmerston, it was Main Street Video, but if my parents were up for an adventure, we’d drive to Listowel to Movies Plus More.
Second, there was the thrill of seeing all of these movies on the shelves – new releases on the main wall, with older titles in the middle of the store.
That was followed by the excitement, or heartbreak, of the movie being in stock or not. There was nothing worse than finding the movie you wanted so badly to see, only to find the orange clip on the VHS or DVD package indicating the movie was not in stock.
Once you found the movie you wanted to watch, you paid your bill – usually a dollar or two – and went home for a night of entertainment in front of the “massive” 24-inch tube TV in the living room.
Maybe it is the nostalgia involved, but movies seemed better back then because of the process. The same can be said for watching a movie in theatres.
But I digress.
The reason for this trip down memory lane is that, on Saturday, my son Duncan got to experience a trip to “rent” a video game for the first time.
Duncan, 8, was watching a YouTube video where a couple of YouTubers were playing a match on FIFA 20. I was walking past when he said, “Can we buy FIFA for the PlayStation?”
A quick search for the game online showed it was going to cost far more than I was willing to pay for a game he may hardly play. As I was about to tell him I was not going to buy the game, I had an “ah-ha” moment.
The library.
The library, like most things in our society, has evolved over the years. No longer is the library a place to get books – you can loan movies, use computers, do arts and crafts, or borrow a video game.
“Get your shoes on, we’re going to the library,” I said.
Duncan looked at me like I had multiple heads.
“You can borrow video games at the library,” I explained.
“Borrow… what do you mean, borrow video games?” he asked.
I explained that the library lends out video games for a seven-day period, similar to how they lend out books.
“Let’s go!” he said.
We drove to our local library, and once he got in the door the hunt was on for the video games. Once he found them, he searched like a mad man for the soccer game.
Thankfully, he found it.
We went through the process of borrowing the game. As we were leaving, he asked how I knew we could borrow games.
“Well, back when I was your age…”
Clearly confused, Duncan asked why we wouldn’t stream a movie on Netflix when I was a kid.
The look on his face when I told him that not only was Netflix not a thing when I was his age, but that high-speed internet was merely a “what if,” said it all.
“How did you survive?” he asked. “How did you spend all of your time?”
“Well, we had to walk to the movie store…”
And it hit me. This is my generation’s version of “we had to walk uphill to school, both ways, in the snow.”
And so the legend of movie stores, and renting movies and games has been passed on to another generation.
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Mike Wilson is the editor of Midwestern Newspapers. He has fond memories of renting video games at the store, especially Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball, which he probably could have bought for less money than he spent renting it. Comments and feedback are welcome at mwilson@midwesternnewspapers.com.
