I Heart DVD’s

“Do not discourage your children from hoarding.”

~Samuel Johnson 

Have you ever been driving, fully engaged with your passenger, and you just fly past your exit?

This happened to me yesterday; except I was alone, and I wasn’t driving.

“I Heart Movies,” wasn’t supposed to be about my parents’ wildly disparate styles of parenting.  

It was supposed to be about me, and my horrible hoarding.

Hello, my name is Writer Dad, and it’s been several months since my last DVD purchase.

Yesterday, I waxed fondly of the cinematic library of my childhood.  Our family wasn’t wealthy by any means, but one of our indulgences was undoubtedly movies.  

At first, they were a novelty.  My dad used to pick them up used from the video store next to our flower shop.  As it grew cheaper to buy them new, my mom assumed the role of acquisition.

She treated this task as though a parallel dimension hinged on her diligence.  

We filled one cabinet, then another.  A small stack started on the floor, soon mounting to a teetering tower.

Then it multiplied.

After purchasing “Mr. Destiny” (yes, she was the one), she was forbidden to buy another movie.

But my mom laughed at prohibition, and turned bootlegger.

At first, my father simply sighed and sort of pretended not to notice, but it was difficult to ignore an extra, unopened copy of “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

Arguments fogged the house with language we weren’t allowed to hear from actors.

My dad demanded that my mom stop slipping in a stack of cinema every time she went to Target.

She kept on doing it anyway.  

This was in the mid-life of VHS, about where DVDs are now, and you could practically find a blockbuster sitting at the bottom of your box of Cheerios.  But even ten cents is expensive, if it’s for two spools of magnetic ribbon that are never gonna rotate.  

Her quiet trafficking continued, until crashing into a hilarious/horrifying conclusion one afternoon in the middle of a family move.

My dad discovered a long box, about the size of a hunchback’s coffin, crammed with sealed movies, tucked in tight rows; the entire stash swaddled beneath a pile of shoes.

There was a raging tempest that day.  It may have been added to the bible, I’m not sure, but I will not speak of it here.

NOTE:  At some point, I would like to discuss my mother’s hoarding in far more detail.  It will be funny, and she is shockingly unembarrassed.  However, I am afraid that the subject will eat my blog.

Despite the discord, I loved that library, and when I left, it was something I missed.

Every weekend, as I rented four movies for four days for four dollars and took them back to my apartment, I’d envision hallways of shelves, stocked with decades of cinema, in the palatial estate of my future.

Years passed, I met Daisy, and she surprised me on our second Christmas with a DVD player about a year after they’d hit the shelves.  

I was in love, with both Daisy and the thin black, sexy thing sitting beneath my TV.

So I binged.  

For five straight years.

I won’t bore you with depths of my idiocy, but I may or may not have bought boxes of flix, for a dollar a pop, from a company based in Thailand, called “DVD’s for a Dollar.”

I’m drawn to the idea of a permanent library, even though I can admit the impracticality.  Perhaps it’s the immediate and available choice, or the tangible validation that I’ve seen or read what’s resting on my shelves.  I know part of it was a desire to share adoration with offspring; a feeling born inside me long before I had any.

Fortunately, I grew up.  I had two children, a mortgage, and no excuse not to.  And honestly, Netflix made it easy.

The last three DVD’s I’ve bought, are all Disney, and even they seem fleeting.  In a few years, it’ll all be downloads.  That’s almost like permission to hoard.  What’s the worst that could happen?  I fill up a hard drive and have to get another; how big are they anyway?

About the size of a single VHS cassette.

Writer Dad

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If you liked that, you’ll probably love, “Here’s a Macbook, Go Make Your Million,” or “Just Pay Attention.“

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