Indiana Jones, the Dodo Bird, and Me

By S.E. Trotter

There’s nothing quite like the blank, uncomprehending stare of a teenage video store clerk to make a person feel, well, old. Of course, I realize that acknowledging that one still visits a video store doesn’t exactly scream “young” and “hip,” either.

Here’s how the latest confirmation of my non-young-ness unfolded.

A recent conversation around the dinner table about the films of Steven Spielberg led to some Youtube searches after dinner, which led to my nine-year-old begging to see Raiders of the Lost Ark. My oldest son, who is twelve, had seen the film a few years ago; he loved it and wanted to see it again, too.

For reasons unclear, I have somehow managed not to own a copy of this film on DVD. I know I had it on VHS.

I blame the children.

Around the time that my husband and I started switching our movie catalog from VHS tapes to DVDs, we also started having babies. For years, discretionary income that should have been set aside for important expenditures, such as ensuring ownership of all early 1980s-era Harrison Ford films, was gobbled up for items such as impossible-to-close strollers instead. I mean, I still have copies of nearly a dozen Baby Einstein DVDs in case anyone wants to watch a zebra puppet admire Monet’s haystacks to the music of Vivaldi. But no Raiders of the Lost Ark. Shameful.

To my surprise, Netflix didn’t have it either—and Netflix has not been spending its money on diapers, cribs, trips to the pediatric ophthalmologist, and birthday party goody bags, so it’s hard to know Netflix’s excuse.

But I digress.

Anyway, this is how I found myself at our neighborhood video store Friday night, searching not for Mr. Goodbar, but for Indiana Jones.

Now that we have Netflix and a smart TV, our trips to the video store have grown increasingly infrequent. I am almost surprised that video stores still exist. With physical CDs, physical books, physical DVDs, physical newspapers, physical brick and mortar stores—physical anythings—disappearing from the landscape like the infamous Dodo bird in 1662, my affection for the tangible has grown. Hello book, hello newspaper. Hello, actual thing I can touch. Thank you for existing somewhere besides behind a glowing screen.

Getting a Netflix account (it’s all Kevin Spacey’s fault—him and his treacherous House of Cards) had made me feel slightly guilty. Complicit, even.

Visiting the video store assuages my guilt a little. It makes me feel like I’m doing my part to help keep the dodos alive. Throwing the birds a few breadcrumbs, at least, on December 31^st, 1661, as the clock marches to midnight.

I headed for the “Favorites” section. If Raiders of the Lost Ark is not a favorite, then what is? Not Raiders of the Lost Ark, as it turns out. ­­­­­­­­­­Failure to Launch, but not Raiders.

Okay, time to go to the archives. I searched out in the general populace, for movies that start with the letter “R”. Nope, not there either.

Finally, it was time to ask a clerk.

“Do you have Raiders of the Lost Ark?” I asked the ten-year-old behind the counter. Okay, okay. The clerk wasn’t really ten. She had to be eleven, at least.

“What?” She asked.

“Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

“Readers of the Lost Ark?”

“Raiders.”

“Readers?” Again with the readers. What would readers want with a lost ark?

“Raiders. You know. With Harrison Ford.”

Nothing. No recognition fired in her matter-of-fact eyes, no smile of understanding crossed her unlined face. It was as if I was speaking in tongues.

“Indiana Jones?” I tried.

Nope. Nothing.

Oh dear God. That’s when it hit me. She was not mis-hearing me. She had not ever heard of the movie. Or Harrison Ford, for that matter. Or Indiana Jones. And then I saw myself through her eyes: just another middle-aged woman, slightly disheveled, in need of coloring some of those gray hairs that were showing through at the roots, with kids in tow, asking about some irrelevant movie from her equally irrelevant youth.

Maybe it was the stunned, perplexed and confused look on my irrelevant face that made her decide to try entering one more search in the computer. Maybe it was pity. Maybe it was just good old-fashioned customer service, indulging the middle-aged and the irrelevant, no matter how pathetic they may be. Either way, she tried again, this time typing in the words “Indiana Jones” instead.

Eureka!

“Oh, Raiders of the Lost Ark,” she said. “I thought you were saying Readers. Yeah, we have it.”

She pointed me to the “Must See” section, where my son quickly found the movie. It turned out the going rate for deep humiliation is pretty cheap: just $2 for five nights. I even bought a jumbo box of Bottle Caps at the counter to help numb the pain.

My husband and I watched the movie later that night with our boys, who loved it, but, let’s be clear: this was a Pyrrhic victory. I am, apparently, living in a world where it is possible for a young adult not to have heard of Indiana Jones. Who is the dodo bird here? I am. I am the dodo. Gobbling Bottle Caps instead of breadcrumbs. Make that request for Bottle Caps a double. I’m going to need them.