One thing I love this week: Scarcity

I think I’m 0 for my last 2 on posting this blog. My bad. I try to be as on top of things as possible, but sometimes life/a weird hangover caused by a combo of red wine and White Russians gets in the way.

Also if you’ve read this blog long enough you should know that I’m not exactly “punctual” or “organized” or “sober” all the time.

Today’s OTILTW is a bit abstract. It’s the long forgotten idea of scarcity. Not to be confused with “Scar City” which is a website I run on the dark web for guys with a surgical fetish.

I understand that scarcity may seem like an odd choice for something I love. It’s actually a very first-world thing to love. In less developed parts of the world, scarcity is pretty much the cause of all of their problems.

But I’m not talking about scarcity of some vital resource. I mean the scarcity in life that breeds excitement.

I was talking to my mom the other day (like a loser) and I mentioned that it’s weird how if I want to watch a particular movie these days, I can have it downloaded and ready to go in a matter of moments.

That’s an amazingly cool thing to be sure, but then I started reminiscing on my childhood (like a loser) when streaming didn’t really exist yet.

Back then, if I wanted to watch a particular movie, my grandfather would drive me to the local Blockbuster and we’d browse around the aisles, taking time to run across the giant floor piano while the pizza-faced teenager working the counter pretended that he didn’t want me dead.

If they had the movie I wanted, great! We’d rent it, my grandfather would buy me a box of Blockbuster Milk Duds that were excessively chewy even by Milk Dud standards, and we’d go home and watch it together. It’s a memory I cherish in my old age (I’m about 55 by Wii Fitness metrics).

But then I started reflecting on the other scenario — if Blockbuster DIDN’T have the movie. I was basically shit out of luck unless it happened to be airing on cable. But that means committing to commercials and heavy editing. You ever try watching Troy on tv? Takes literally 6 hours and you get to see zero boob. Enormous waste of time.

In general though, if Blockbuster didn’t have the movie I wanted, I’d just pick another movie, and get a box of Sno-Caps that were so old that all the little sprinkles had fallen off so I was just eating Caps.

But here’s the thing: I didn’t mind.

I was just happy to get to spend time with my grandparents, watch a movie I liked, and eat expired candy. I didn’t need to have the exact thing I was looking for to be happy.

It was that scarcity, that fundamental inability get whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it, that made me more grateful for what I did have.

Let me stick with the movie theme for a second here. My brother and I were (and still are) huge fans of the Mighty Ducks movies. Actually, someone remind me to do a “Smartass Summary” about one of those. Anyways, all 3 movies are great, but D2: The Mighty Ducks was by far our favorite.

The only problem: it was impossible to find. No clue why. Blockbuster always had the original and D3, but never D2. Maybe it was a distribution issue or maybe everyone else loved it as much as we did so it was always rented. But either way, we spent a couple YEARS after our first viewing hunting that movie down with no success.

Flash forward to when I’m 10 or 11. My parents rented some place up in New Hampshire. This was pre-AirBnB obviously so that they were able to successfully execute a short-term property rental is impressive in and of itself.

My brother and I got settled in the place, then darted over to the movie shelf that every rental property has for some reason to peruse the selection. It was kind of halfway between the VHS-DVD transition so this house had a little bit of both. We shuffled through the collection, and then, clear as day, there it was — D2: The Mighty Ducks on VHS.

And we freaked out. We were the most excited anyone has ever been to discover a VHS of a movie they had already seen.

But that’s just it. We were genuinely excited.

Nowadays we’d just download the movie off Amazon, watch it, get a few yucks in, then move on to the next movie. But the feeling wouldn’t be there. Because we didn’t have the fun and thrill of searching for it. Of hoping this would be the store where we’d find it.

Scarcity had created a situation where we had to work to find this movie. It turned watching a movie into an adventure. And to this day, D2: Mighty Ducks is one of my favorite movies because of all the fun we had looking for it and the joy of finally finding it.

Instant gratification is great sometimes, but no technological advancement comes without cost. Now the little things just don’t mean as much. That’s why, this week, I love scarcity. Because sometimes waiting for something just makes it that much sweeter.

This blog was paid for by Blockbuster. Blockbuster — good luck with that whole internet fad Netflix.