Baby, don't hurt me

When I was in high school I signed up for an elective called Video/Film. I was the only honor roll student in the class (because honor roll students are far too busy taking AP European History and other more rigorous courses), and honor roll students all tend to know one another (know your competition!), so I didn't know anyone going in. It was mostly guys, mostly slackers, watching clips from important movies, learning how to operate a video camera, using cool camera and film tricks, and editing film the old fashioned way--on a machine, NOT on a computer. I was so into it. I loved coming up with ideas for our assignments: make a commercial for a product, shoot a music video, create a public service announcement (PSA).

My group included my petite, ambiguously ethnic self, a very large Hispanic male, a tall, thin, pale Caucasian male, and some slacker I can't quite picture clearly. I led my team on a Night-at-the-Roxbury-themed project to convince our fellow students to clean up the school. We used the famous song - What is Love? - to create a head-bopping PSA, in which we all starred, simultaneously head-bopping away as we pretended to throw away trash, that apparently was so good that a little later the instructor played the PSA for the entire school body during our morning announcements (our brand new school had a TV in each classroom where we would watch the announcements daily).

They would re-air the PSA several times over the next few years. Then I graduated. My younger brother, who graduated from the same school 3 years after me, told me that they were still playing my PSA 3 years after I had graduated, and 5 years after we had made the thing.

I wonder if it still comes on every once in a while, and how staticky and distorted the tape must be from the wear and tear.