A fond farewell

Like many rela­tion­ships these days, ours began inno­cent­ly enough, dri­ven main­ly by curios­i­ty on my part and fueled by the inter­net. Little did I know that my urgent key­strokes on that unsea­son­ably warm April evening in 2007 would launch a 16-year love affair that pro­vid­ed immea­sur­able solace and diver­sion dur­ing some very rocky times.

But now it’s over even though I don’t want it to be. Last month’s “it’s‑not-you-it’s‑me” email made that abun­dant­ly clear. I can’t say I didn’t see it com­ing — there were lots of warn­ing signs, espe­cial­ly over the last cou­ple of years. But peo­ple in love see only what they want to see, and in my case, I saw only those boda­cious red envelopes.

So Netflix and I are now his­to­ry — at least as far as DVDs go. Call me old-fash­ioned and a hope­less roman­tic. I con­cur. Anticipating the arrival of my next movie was almost as enjoy­able as watch­ing it. Sauntering to the mail­box, retriev­ing that love-col­ored enve­lope, tear­ing it open gen­tly along those thought­ful­ly pro­vid­ed per­fo­ra­tions, check­ing for nicks and cracks — all were sen­su­al delights that will be missed but not soon for­got­ten. Likewise for the plea­sure of por­ing over the disc jack­et syn­op­sis, slid­ing the DVD into the play­er and hear­ing it whirr while hold­ing my breath until the screen sprung to life. I even enjoyed occa­sion­al­ly hav­ing to clean a disc because some man­ner of for­eign gunk was caus­ing it to mal­func­tion. Why? Because I don’t enter into rela­tion­ships light­ly, and when I do, I commit.

Throughout our decade and a half togeth­er, Netflix nev­er let me down, which is rare for part­ner­ships of that length. Every cracked or dam­aged disc (and there were only a few out of the 887 we exchanged over the years) was imme­di­ate­ly replaced with sin­cere apolo­gies and light­ning-fast effi­cien­cy. As a result, I enjoyed approx­i­mate­ly 1,774 hours of view­ing plea­sure that, for a gal who has had only broad­cast TV since 1992, would nev­er oth­er­wise have been possible.

Most every­one I know quit DVDs years ago, but I held on, in part because the Netflix DVD library was much more com­pre­hen­sive than its stream­ing coun­ter­part. If that’s a ratio­nal­iza­tion, I think it’s a pret­ty good one. But there’s prob­a­bly more to it than that. A wise coun­selor once won­dered if I might be “too loy­al.” I don’t know. I do know that I’m behind the times in many ways: I won’t give up my land­line . . . I enjoy writ­ing cards and thank-you notes . . . I’ve nev­er Ubered or Venmoed . . . I still don’t have a Facebook account . . . my cal­en­dar is a large paper thing on my refrig­er­a­tor that I write notes on . . . I hold my news­pa­per in my hands . . . I hate read­ing on screens. I could go on, but hope­ful­ly this is enough for you to under­stand that for some­one like me, Netflix’s deci­sion to ter­mi­nate its DVD sub­scrip­tion ser­vice and focus sole­ly on the more lucra­tive stream­ing mar­ket is a blow.

I’m pret­ty resilient though, and as Gloria Gaynor once famous­ly sang, I will sur­vive. I have sup­port­ive friends who have gen­tly intro­duced me to Roku, which I actu­al­ly set up suc­cess­ful­ly on my very first try. (And yes, I know Roku is not new to any­one but me.) That accom­plish­ment has made it pos­si­ble to enjoy our fan­tas­tic local library’s free Hoopla and Kanopy stream­ing ser­vices on my tele­vi­sion screen — some­thing I could nev­er make hap­pen before. And when I’m feel­ing espe­cial­ly verklempt, I can always walk to the library and check out DVDs (as well as actu­al books and oth­er hand-held read­ing mate­r­i­al) to keep me ground­ed and in my com­fort zone.

And so, time — and tech­nol­o­gy — march­es on . . . part­ing is such sweet sor­row . . . all good things must come to an end . . . yada, yada, yada. The joys of Netflix DVDs are over, and I’m mov­ing for­ward with fond mem­o­ries. We had a great run, and I appre­ci­ate that the com­pa­ny has let me (and all the oth­er DVD dinos still roam­ing the Earth) down easy with this heart­warm­ing farewell ges­ture: we get to keep our final discs! Mine is an oldie, natch — 2008’s Hall & Oates: Live at the Troubadour. And because Netflix under­stands that we hang­ers-on are sen­ti­men­tal, we can also down­load a keep­sake PDF of our entire rental his­to­ry, along with a per­son­al­ized time­line. I’ve already print­ed mine out, of course, and placed it lov­ing­ly in a three-ring binder along­side the pho­to albums in our knot­ty-pine den.