The ’90s: a golden age of overalls and multi-colored scrunchies, with Polly Pockets and Beanie Babies for every occasion. I thank my lucky stars that my family saw the wisdom in recording them. Camcorders hadn’t been around for long, so half our home videos contain nuggets like, “Why does it blur like that?” and “It’s blinking again,” and “Hit the red button!” It’s funny until I remember how long it took me to master texting on a flip phone.

New technology is a bitch, no matter the era.

I really oughta thank my mom’s brother, Troy, not any luck-filled stars, for teaching our family how to film.

When Mom was a toddler, she couldn’t say brother, so she said “bubba” instead, and the nickname stuck. Our aunt Shana’s kids started calling him Uncle Bubba, so it was a given that my sister and I would, too.

It’s not easy to part Bubba from his smile, so long as he’s got something to be passionate about, and back then it was taking home videos. When Bubba’s the cinematographer, shots are focused, there’s an occasional zoom, and, most crucially, he meticulously states the date and place of the recording. For that and more, I will forever owe him all the novelty t-shirts and cowboy hats that I can find (Bubba’s favorites).

In one home video, Aunt Shana changes two-week-old baby me on the kitchen counter while Mom reads Uncle Bubba’s handwritten instructions on how to use his new camcorder: “Turn on camera, open the standby, hit record, you all set to go. And I love you.”

Mom pauses, then asks, “He wrote that?” Her voice rises, not with incredulity but with the satisfaction of an older sister watching her kid brother flourish. “He wrote all that by himself!”

R.I.P. Uncle Bubba, the world will never again shine so bright without you in it.

Kinsey Keys

aspiring memoirist rummaging through my noggin, stubbornly clutching the past to my chest like it’s a newborn babe starved for mother's milk.

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