My mother and I share many traits in common: we are both tall, have long hair, and watch Star Trek because the actors are attractive (with her, it’s the original Captain Kirk. For me, Trip from Enterprise. That lazy southern drawl gets me every time; the fact that he ends up with T’Pol and I secretly wish I was her is also no coincidence. It’s much easier to like a guy on screen if his female interest is someone you can stand).

We also value media with great replay value. Or, to rephrase that, both have a tendency to listen to the same music, watch the same movies, and read the same books – over and over, “ad infinitum,” as I’m sure it seems to those around us whose tastes doesn’t quite align. Some people have recently questioned my tendency to do this; they feel that a book, once read, has been exhausted of most of its value, and the same with a movie, and, though those in question will probably listen to the same music over and over, I doubt they stick a CD in the car and refrain from taking it out for six months (as my mother did with the Dixie Chick’s album Home. I can still sing along to every song on the album, half a decade later.)

Whether you can chalk this up to an intellectual tendency to dig deeper and deeper, or just sentimental attachment, it is what it is. There’s a reason I had Gone with the Wind quoted to me throughout my entire childhood – “Isn’t this generation soft and ladylike!”  There’s also a reason I know the first line of Pride and Prejudice – “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.” And, there’s a reason myself and my siblings can quote some movies nearly end to end – Toy Story, if you’re my sister and I, Billy Madison -among many others- if you’re the boys, Men in Black if you’re me about eight years ago. There is also a reason the Lake House Soundtrack by Rachel Portman has a play count of nearly a hundred on my iPod.

Why? Because we just really like the movie, book, or song. A lot.

What about you? Do you have this tendency? Maybe it’s a yes-or-no deal, but regardless, it runs in our family. From my mother and my devotion to Gone with the Wind to the kids getting a new movie and watching it three times in a row to Papa playing that Negramaro tape every time he makes pizza – it’s just our thing.