As a child of the ’80s, I grew up with television – albeit the kind you had to get up and change the channel on manually. TV commercials were great for bathroom breaks or grabbing a drink from the kitchen.
By high school, we finally got cable and — gasp! — a remote control. HBO ran its movies somewhere along the lines of 35 times a day, and I saw Star Wars more times than I can even count. But no pause button, so if I had to make a trip to the little girls’ room, I’d miss something.
On viewing No. 4,236 of Star Wars, that wasn’t an issue, but if it was the HBO premiere of Down and Out in Beverly Hills, well, you just might have had to miss the part “when a dirty bum meets the filthy rich.”
We had one of those old clunky first-gen VCRs the approximate size of Rhode Island that actually had a remote pause button, but it had to be connected via a cord that snaked across the room. It was so unweildy, actually, that I believe I used it only once, during a marathon viewing of Galactica 1980. (Hey, I was incredibly crushed over the cancellation of the original BSG, I was ready to latch onto anything. Even Wolfman Jack with a Cylon.)
