Inactivity has a momentum all its own.
Often when we aren’t doing something we continue to not do it.
We’ve all kept out that library book until it was overdue. We should take it back, but we just neglect to do so. After a while, we are ashamed to take back the book and are afraid of how much we will have to pay in overdue fines.
We never can use the library again unless the library holds an amnesty day. Or, occasionally, it makes the news that someone returned a library book they had kept for 29 years and with the library’s blessing donated the fine to charity.
I found myself in a similar dilemma with a DVD from Netflix. I rented the film “The Last Laugh,” a grim silent German film from 1924 in which the doorman of a swanky hotel is demoted to washroom attendant, after which he is mocked and rejected by family and friends.
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It’s a classic. Too depressing, said my wife, so we didn’t watch it. We didn’t watch it a lot. And pretty soon it was weeks. Then weeks turned into months. Then it was a year.
I feared. What would Netflix do to me? How much would I have to pay for keeping it so long? Would I have to buy the movie?
Finally, I screwed my courage to the sticking place and attempted to email Netflix.
You know how they say that after a while pets and pet owners come to resemble each other?
Well, that’s what happened with my computer. It has become elderly and arthritic and no longer is able to do some of the things it used to do. One of the things it can’t do is access Netflix.
Now what?
I missed watching movies. And Netflix won’t send a movie until the previous movie is returned, which I hadn’t done for more than a year.
Oh, all right. I’ve had enough. I dropped “The Last Laugh” in the mailbox and awaited whatever punishment Netflix decreed.
A few days later, Netflix replied by sending me what I supposed was the next DVD on my watch list, just as if I hadn’t kept one of their movies for more than a year.
I opened the envelope in happy anticipation.
It was “Lincoln,” a movie I had already seen.
Should I watch it again?
I’ll just put it aside for now until I decide.
Paul Sassone is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.