Surgery

When you are an aficionado of VHS tapes, you're dealing with a lot of old, beaten-down specimens. Most tapes are, in my experience, in surprisingly good shape. Ones that were still in shrink-wrapped plastic showed some of the worst deterioration, oddly enough. Anyway, I've had good luck with tapes mostly ( although it's true that I've always passed up ones that I suspected might be trouble), but not always.

For the first time I can think of, I went inside a tape. There was this little bit of plastic rattling around inside of it. That really bothered me, but I might have left it alone except for the fear I had that it would somehow get caught up in the tape as it played and wreck both cassette as well as player. I didn't quite know what to do, but a friend suggested that I simply unscrew the tape open to get the plastic bit. I did so, and that was the easy part.