Of course, dear reader, you would have never had known this but at one time, I was on track to own every movie ever made.

That’s right – an audacious claim to be sure but BC (Before Cris) I had well over 4,000 DVDs in my personal collection. 

And when I collect something, I go all out.

When I lived in China and comfortably single, I made a habit of going to my local vendor and buying DVD’s by the bucket load and at .62 cents each, home entertainment never got so cheap.

Imagine having a DVD collection that spanned every genre – from Disney to adventure, horror, war, classic, sci-fi and everything in between – right at your fingertips.

I had sooooo many DVDs that thousands were even stashed away in formerly empty suitcases.

Then, reality set in.

Actually the twin children made going out for my local load of several hundred DVD’s not only time consuming but, when you have two beautiful children such as these, why watch a fantasy movie?

So, like any respectable collector, I did the right thing.

I gave them all away.

I have no doubt that one year ago, I made some Chinese worker’s day when he found boxes upon boxes of DVD’s outside my apartment – fair game for anyone to come by and just scoop them up.

It just broke my heart to give them all away, but there was no way we could have afford to transport any of them to America. Think you can rent a storage unit in China and just shove them inside for some future pick-up?

Guess again buster.

There is no such thing as a storage unit in China unless you are moving to another apartment.

So in my case, I said farewell and pretty much dumped the entire lot of them outside my front door of our apartment in the Garden Hotel, Guangzhou.

I cried all night long.

It was for giving them up… the endless hours of arranging the catalog, labeling each of the 250 DVDs per case and then arranging them by genre.

SIGH.

Now my world is regulated by Netflix which decides for me what movies it will show each month.

SIGH.