2001

The year is 2001.

We fade in on a sunny day. A green tree, swaying in the breeze. A boy riding a bicycle, a man watering his lawn. A swarming beehive. And another. And ten others. One clutched to the underside of a roof, another right underneath a swing set seat. A swing set situated in the backyard of one Lloyd family.

“No playing outside today,” said a fictional representation of my father, peaking outside, “the bees are out.” He drew the shades.

He and his loving wife look worriedly at their two adorable children, sucking on popsicles and watching Barney on a 4:3  CRT TV.

“This will only keep them occupied for so long,” They said aloud in unison.

“I have an idea,” said my dad, “let’s go to blockbusters.”

They step in front of the tv, which angers us. I thought we raised you better than this.

“Hey kids, dad is gonna go rent a movie. Is there anything you want us to get for you?”

My sister and I don’t even need to lock eyes. We’re already on the same page on this one.

“The train movie,” we say.

And it’s what we say every time. Every summer movie weekend, for three years.

The Train Movie

There comes a time in every young child’s life where they develop the wherewithal to decide for themselves what movies they want to stick into the VHS player. And as every person who has had the misfortune of watching a movie with a two year old knows, it’s 99% of the time going to be the same movie they’ve already seen 800 times. The train movie was one such movie.

(Wee Sing train movie)

Breaking the format for this blog, I won’t delve into the plot of the Train Movie (as we called it), nor my critique of it. Because, in fact, this movie exists as a part of a larger series of children’s videos that deserves its own blog post on a different week. What’s important towards this week’s story is that we basically owned Blockbuster’s copy of this movie. I don’t even think we ever technically returned it. Just renewed it every time the rental period ran out. I’m pretty sure I recall that my dad joked every time he rented it that it would be cheaper to just buy it. But we always yearned and begged to renew the rental so that we could watch it a hundred times for just one more week.

My sister and I spoke in lines from the film to each other. We played Train Movie in the backyard. We talked about it in Sunday School. We were Whoville, and everyday was Christmas. And Christmas was the Train Movie.

In 2003, our parents sat us down and tried to explain to us that sometimes, people go to different houses and don’t come back to the one they lived in before. They go to different places with a different library and park and Bible Study friends. I think I vaguely understood, but was also too young to really mind moving. Plus there was this thing called Disneyland and we going to be living like right next to it. So that sounded neat.

Thus, we enter the next chapter in my life, the chapter that future weeks will focus exclusively on. I become old enough to go to preschool, I learn to read, and I watch new movies.

But sadly, and this is the kicker, the Blockbusters nearest our house did not carry the Train Movie. We were devastated. Why does the Blockbusters not have it? Like, there can’t be more than 4, 5 movies tops. Like, let’s count, Sing and Dance with Barney, the Sound of Music, uh does the Wiggles count? That’s like three right there. So ultimately, my dad did give in and bought us the entire set of Wee Sing musical videos, giving us so much more content to memorize and devise inside jokes around. A new era of memes was thusly born. Well, actually he didn’t buy all of them, but that’s a story for another time.

(That was the main blog post but there’s one more story I want to tell and it doesn’t fit anywhere else)

Banana Split

The Train Movie wasn’t the only VHS we obliterated in our carefree youth. There was also a sea of forgettable VHSs that us 90s-00s kids know all about, you know like sing-alongs and cheaply made dubs of foreign children’s cartoons. If you’re a meme aficionado like me, you know of the kazoo kid meme, and the special those memes come from, stuff like that is what I’m referring to. Weird, trippy stuff. And much like the Eldritch nightmares that Lovecraft himself spoke of in his fiction, these films drift away from our memories, leaving only echoes of fear and dread. Movies like Fire Safety for Kids ft. Beasel the Easel.

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Yikes.

But the movie I want to discuss might not even exist. During my youthful phase of renting Blues Clues and Bob the Builder VHS tapes, there was another video that I rented far, far more than once. It was called Banana Split, and it’s kind of underwhelming to talk about because it’s not a creepy pasta but I can’t substantiate its existence even slightly. I remember clearly that it was this compilation of different cartoons, the same way that Nickelodeon sometimes did like Christmas themed VHSs of holiday episodes from different shows, but I remember it was an episode of the Magic School Bus, Bananas in Pajamas, Allegra’s Window, and Gullah Gullah Island. Already, it’s odd because A, these shows don’t all belong to the same network but B. I was not aware that these episodes belonged to shows that existed outside of this VHS. I knew of Magic School Bus, even if I didn’t watch it, but it was not until years later that I discovered that Gullah Gullah Island wasn’t just some kind of fever dream. What’s even more odd, is that there was a segment that I can’t put to a show, even now remembering the snippet of one character making the other cry and it was this really deep, emotional confrontation. They were puppets like in Allegra’s Window,  but definitely not from that show at all. What was this show? What was this VHS? I remember it was called Banana Split. Am I insane? Is this movie relevant to the blog?

Look, I’m a very sentimental person. I still remember my friends from Kindergarten, even after moving away and not being able to find them on social media. I still remember their faces because I care and I’m the kind of guy to never stop caring, and this VHS taps into that. And it infuriates me to no end that I will never know whether or not this tape is some sick and twisted joke or maybe some bootleg compilation that made its way to Blockbuster by accident.

The world may never know.

(Sorry for no memes this week. I’m on vacation! Still had time to type this out, though)