My Most Precious Possession

Imagine for one moment that you are standing on your neighbor's front lawn in your pajamas, watching your house burn to the ground. All of your family and pets are safe. If at this moment, you have a chance to safely dash back into the burning building and retrieve one precious belonging, what would if be? I personally already have issues like this thought out ahead of time. In case of emergencies, I will be ready to act. The item I would rush to grasp would be my CD collection, because of its monetary and sentimental value. I have a very large and diverse compact disk collection. I estimate that I currently own close to three hundred. When you take in to account that I paid between ten and fifteen dollars for each one, you might begin to understand how precious they are to me. My estimate comes to thirty-five hundred dollars. If viewed as a whole it is one of the single most expensive things I own. Second and most importantly is the sentimental value the collection has. You might find it strange that plastic can have sentimental value. I assure you; it can. I like different types of music when I am in different moods. I own CD's with all of the following types of music: country, rock, heavy metal, pop, classic rock, folk, reggae, classical, blues, ska, swing, rap, Spanish, bluegrass and many other types I probably have forgotten. For most of these CDs I have the track numbers and all the words to most songs memorized from playing them so many times. If I hear the ending of a song that I have in my collection I can start singing you the beginning of the song directly after it. I use music to compliment my mood or to put me in a better one. Each song I own says a different thing to me or reminds me off a different memory of my past. Some of these discs are practically irreplaceable. As any music lover can tell you no one music store carries every CD. I buy them at concerts from little known artists, at obscure music shops, from internet sites, or just about anywhere I see them. Some were extremely hard for me to track down; others are autographed. A few from my collection I made from songs on my computer; consequently, they are one of a kind. One in particular has recordings of songs I friend of mine wrote. It's not the discs I am so attached to but the songs on them and the way the make me feel. If I were to lose this collection I would be losing not only a large sum of money and a lot of precious time spent collecting them, but every individual song that means so much to me. I suppose there is life without music, but that's something I'd rather not think about.