In retrospect, it should have been easy. My friend and I would walk in to the theater, pay our eight bucks or so, buy some pop-corn and laugh to our heart’s content.
That’s not how life works out sometimes.
Flashback two days ago. On a lark, “Margaret” and I decided to see Julie and Julia. To be more accurate, she decided to go, and I tagged along. We clambered into my Honda Accord- I dropped by her house about an hour or so before- and within a moment’s notice we were on the interstate. Fortunately for us, there was a theater not twenty miles from where she lived. The commute lasted less than thirty minutes.
We arrived a little early- by my calculations, the movie wouldn’t start until 1:30, and it was already noon. We ate at local chain restaurant, the likes of which I will probably never visit again and wouldn’t want to. By the time we left (more or less) the movie was already starting, and fortunately for us, we made it to the theater just in time to see what in my mind seemed to be a never ending series of commercials. But that’s not what ticked me off.
Not five minutes after the movie began a couple in front of us fished out what appeared to be a cell phone. Then a couple in the aisle across from us did the same and another, and another.
To this day I don’t know if they were texting or what- judging from their intermittent use of them, the couple appeared to be texting, and more than likely that was just a sliver of what I witnessed. Despite the movie industry’s crackdown on illegal piracy, bootleg tapes are still worth a mint on the black market, and it’s entirely possible that what I witnessed was a coordinated operation, operating in plain sight. I’m no detective, and I don’t claim to be one, but even as I watched Amy Adams do her thing on screen, the possibility lingered in my mind.
Yet it is the distraction created by their activity that bothered me more than anything else. Even as my left eye was glued to the screen, my right eye glared at them, enough to make them think twice on more than a few occasions. Though the geriatric crowd Margaret and I were with didn’t notice, I did, and that’s all that seemed to matter to me. Sometimes, that’s all it takes to make rain on my parade.
The ride back home was uneventful. Margaret never said anything. So typical of her. She’s not one to make a big deal out of anything. Unlike me. We hugged and said our goodbyes, and I drove back home, the anger and disappointment I experienced fresh in my mind. I tried to push it out of my mind the entire night- I really did- but my prudishness got the better of me (she enjoyed the movie, BTW).
Two days later, my righteous indignation has tempered some. I’m not a prude- I know firsthand times are tough, and I allow for that. Not that I’ve forgotten. Movie theaters are a bubble, an airy, escapist bubble. Letting go depends on large part on being able to focus one hundred and ten percent on the cellulite on the screen- not a slab of silicone and plastic. Cell phones and Mini-Cams get in the way of that.
Margaret would probably counsel me not to sweat the small stuff. She’s good at putting things in perspective. But she loves me nevertheless. Of course she would. She’s my grandmother, after all.
–John Winn