Legally Binding And The Second DVD Player
Wednesday is about books. Although sometimes, it’s just some writing. Today, a story about the special relationship I have cultivated with my dad over the last few years. Also features a DVD player.
It was a while ago now. Streaming wasn’t a big thing. DVDs were starting to seem rare — people were pirating of course, people were watching what they could, where they could, and it was often a big deal to have a USB drive full of the goodness you’d ‘found’ and/or ‘been given’ to share and share alike…
But there were plenty of us that still had big collections of DVDs and CDs. And movie collections (even some VHS you know). And more than one actual TV in the house. Not quite the reliance on phones and laptops and tablets.
We had just bought a second TV — a treat for the bedroom. And though it was going well, we were bored of what was on TV and craved the chance to watch DVDs upstairs. So, I remember this one time we drove around town looking for a cheap DVD player. This was just before they’d gone all the way down in price, and you could find them on the shelves of supermarkets. But you’d still likely find one for around $100. (They’ve since cleared the surplus and now they’re back ‘up’ in price — if you can find one…)
I had this super-flash DVD player and full surround-sound speaker system, which I won as part of a sales competition back in the CD Store daze. It’s a whole other story, but the gist of it is that I won the fancy new DVD system for putting up with that atrocious fucking Carly Binding album every single day as part of a promotion-thing. It just so happened that when I was chosen as the person that had listened to the album in-store the most, my review — from my ‘other gig’, writing album reviews for The DomPost — happened to be in that very day’s issue. It was a scathing one-star. And the guy from the record company was having a huge whinge about how they couldn’t give me the win since I was obviously a jerk who hated Carly Binding. But I had the proof, CD Store Me Did Not Hate Carly Binding. It was only Newspaper Review Me That Hated Carly Binding. We’re like Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk. And though Ashley from Festival Records might not have liked me, nor the fact that the album he was pushing ‘got me angry’. Bruce Banner was getting a flash new DVD player with all the speakers eh!
Anyway, that’s not what this is about. This is about The Second DVD Player. And my dad told me to wait, to not rush into buying one. He knew a bargain better than me, see. He’d been around the block (looking for cheap DVD players) and knew a thing. Or possibly even two.
My dad reckoned we’d need to go to three places to ‘cost out’ ‘the units’ and ‘make a satisfactory comparison’. So the first place we went was offering a DVD player (with a remote control too, my dad pointed out — as if that wasn’t always a part of the ‘deal’) for $85. The old boy reckoned there had to be cheaper. I thought that wasn’t bad at all. But we went to the second place — to compare.
It wasn’t any cheaper!
So on to the third. Where we waited, especially so that someone on a minimum wage could ‘speak to his boss’ because my dad had asked if he could ‘sharpen his pencil’. We waited. And then waited some more. And I started moving towards the door — I’d had enough. But I was also having to make it look like I was having a general browse and could, even, have been in the market for something else eh. Then word came back that a price was a price, was fixed. And that was that. There was a big dramatic pause from my dad before exhaling loudly and announcing, “We’ll think about it”. Like the DVDs piled up by the TV could just wait until the price was absolutely correct and also very, very right indeed.
We left the store and there was, according to my old man, a lesson in this for all of us. He proclaimed, “You see, he might have won the intellectual battle — but he lost the sale”. There was a pause. And then, “That doesn’t make him very smart”.
We got back to the car and there was a parking ticket.
“That doesn’t make you very smart”, my dad said, since there was clearly one more bullet in his chamber.
(We had parked the car close by, and because we ‘wouldn’t be long’).
We made it home without a DVD player, and when we did eventually get one — as soon as my dad left town, and back at the first place we’d been to — it was technically even less of a bargain.
My dad had said there was a lesson there for all of us. And I said that yeah I agreed. And he said, “Well, really for you and the idiot from the store that doesn’t provide discount”.
