The Harris Family

For Christmas, my mom had our family’s old 8mm home movies converted to a DVD.

There are 9 movies in all, starting with Christmas 1978 and ending with Christmas 1985. Because the movies have no sound, it’s sometimes a trifle difficult to tell what’s going on, so these will probably be interesting only to people who are actually in them.

My dad only appears in one of them because he’s the one who was (manually) cranking the camera.

I thought it would be fun to post the movies to the web so that everyone could watch them easily.

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Movie 1: Christmas 1978

Here is the oldest movie, taken at the old house on Buchholz drive at the end of 1978. I was two-and-a-half years old.

Most of the movie is people (well, principally me) opening presents. Notable in this movie is that I go bowling for the first time.

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Movie 2: Christmas 1978 (Part 2)

This is a continuation of the previous movie, focused more on actually playing with the new presents.

In this one, I learn how to dunk a basketball.

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Movie 3: Jensen’s Third Birthday Party (1979)

This is footage from my third birthday party in June 1979. Seems like I had a lot of female friends!

I remember lots of the furniture in this one (such as the card table chairs) being used at least until I moved out of the house.

Are You My Mother? is a great book!

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Movie 4: Jensen’s Third Birthday Party (Part 2)

Now it’s time to play “pin the tail on Big Bird.”

The thing I love most about this movie is how my mom cheats to make sure that I win, “directing” me towards the target while pointing the neighbor kids subtly away from the target.

Budding parents note, here’s a solid way to build self-esteem!

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Movie 5: Parade (1979)

Another movie from 1979, this time a documenting parade that for some reason was bandying by our house.

The thing that amazes me about this movie is how olde-tyme everything looks. Really, it resembles the 1950s Hill Valley scenes in “Back to the Future.”

But not the cars, of course; those have “mid-70s junker” written all over them.

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Movie 6: At Nana and Bope’s (1982)

Here we are during one of the hot, halcyon days of summer at Nana and Bope’s condo in Westfield Center.

Carr makes his first appearance, we practice fishing (on the lawn) and learn to use pinwheels.

My cousin Tyler and I have a foot race; I don’t want to spoil the results, but an extra year of age might have given me a manifest advantage…

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Movie 7: Christmas 1984

This might have been the Christmas Madeline arrived, but she chose to wait it out in the womb, so Carr and I had one last blissful Christmas as the full centers of attention.

Someone should have bought me a longer bathrobe. Just sayin’.

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Movie 8: Christmas 1984 (Part 2)

This is the one and only movie in which my dad appears, as Bopy took over the camera for a few seconds.

Don’t miss the exciting second act, in which Carr and I knock the living crap out of Rocky and Mr. T.

At the end of the movie, Madeline is a newborn baby, getting a piano lesson from Grandma Jo.

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Movie 9:

Maddie sits up in her highchair, almost a year old. I get a longer bathrobe and a Pioneer CT-10 tape deck (which I’m embarrassed to admit I still have, and is now considered “vintage.”) Carr unwraps a big cardboard box and seems to be calmly satisfied with it.