You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Bringing a kidnapping suspect to a movie.
Movie Theater ettiquete is a time honored barometer of social behavior.
You don’t kick the seat in front of you.
You don’t talk loudly or get up incessantly.
For god’s sakes, chew your pop corn silently, sloth man.
But the days of respect and decency are waning.
As people put more apps on their smart phones, they seem to get socially more stupid.
I’ve been to 2 movies in the last week.
People have lost their damn minds.
Rudeness and loudness and things I would not consider doing in the privacy of my own living room are now common in a crowded theater of people paying their hard earned money to escape the rigors of every day existence.
As I view this unfolding drama in the row before me, I wonder; have people always been rude? Have they always been loud? Or am I now so old, so tired, so sick of loud and rude, that when it dances across my spectrum of tolerance, it is a flash point.
I am watching The Wall starring Matt Damon. The film is almost non stop action, but very bizarre as science fiction monsters created in a CG factory spill across the screen. My early thought: I wouldn’t see this movie again, not even for free on an airline.
But this theater experience is sullied. Perhaps Matt Damon has turned in an Academy Award performance. I will never know because of the constant irritant before me.
It begins when a young couple enters with a 2 year old child. The movie is 6 minutes in, and they walk in like this is a preview. They are clutching blanket and a baby bag full of drek and a tub of pop corn.
They sit down as quietly as a barn animal giving birth.
I stare at this ensemble of rude and wonder to myself; “Could they not find a sitter?”
The couple sits, but never grows quiet. There is always a sense of movement, an unsettled feeling coming from them. It’s as if a washing machine with too many towels is rocking violently back and forth in place.
I try and watch as Matt Damon chops off the head off a prehistoric adversary. Blood spills across the screen. The sound of the head being severed is Hollywood gruesome and Dolby theater loud.
“Is this really appropriate for a toddler?”
I wonder if the child will sleep tonight. Visions of goo and guts and heads being severed is not a popular mobile for a crib.
After many minutes of non stop bloodletting, the action slows and the sounds of heads being severed gives way to silent ruminations and important dialogue.
That’s when I notice the toddler. She is cooing and making baby sounds and talking and whining. She is fidgeting and squirming like a 30 pound Earth Worm that has been exposed on the lawn after a hard rain.
This noisy child, though small, is loud enough, distracting enough to ruin this experience.
I am torn with emotion.
On one hand, I was the father of small children once. I understand that children can be difficult in such situations and that as a parent you are sometimes put in a position where your parenting spectrum is pushed to the limit. This is when you hope that other parents will recognize your dilemma and show tolerance and compassion.
But on the other hand I am not tolerant or compassionate. I am Matt Damon. I want to slice off the couple’s head. I want to bash them in the neck with my oversized popcorn bucket. I want them to gather up their toddler like a soiled diaper and leave the theater in shame.
HOW DARE YOU BRING YOUR WAILING BLUBBERING OFFSPRING INTO MY SANCTUARY OF DREAMS?
I imagine all the theater attendees joingin me as we stand and boo and throw M&M boxes at them.
I do not stand or throw garbage at the couple.
Instead I sit there, in the movie silence, in the place where I am paying for the quiet to be quiet and the loud to be loud. And I begin to stew like gravy on a burner set to high.
“Do you want a bottle,” they say aloud, trying to shove a nipple in the bag of flesh’s whining orifice.
The child takes the bottle and throws it ont he ground.
Clank.
“What did Matt Damon just say?,” I think to myself more annoyed than a steam locomotive with way too much steam.
He has to get what to defeat whom and that is the premise of the movie? I just missed the most important scene in this lame ass movie because this couple in front of me either doesn’t have the sense to get a baby sitter, or simply cannot afford it.
I am seething. I want to come out of my chair and give them a piece of my mind.
“How dare you plebians of cinematic expierence ruin my evening out!” That’s what I would scream in the man’s ear. But I don’t. I am the bubbling cauldron of gravy, watching as the boat people in front of me allow this mutant child to play on the stairs.
“Oh that’s safe,” I think to myself. “
I find myself now watching the baby, wondering when it falls down the aisle, how loud the wail will be. Will baby bones snap on the sharp edges of the theater stairwell? How much blood can exit a toddler’s head wound, I wonder to myself.
As the viscus gravy of my anger begins to boil into a thick steam, I imagine how crazy this family is? Are they even the parents? Perhaps this is a kidnapping and the couple has ducked into the theater to escape the FBI dragnet going on outside. Perhaps this is 2 hours is designed to let the real family consider the ransom demands and come up with the cash.
I wouldn’t give 18 dollars for this kid, I think to myself.
The child holds on to the railing, dropping its bottle, picking up its bottle, dropping its bottle. The child, boy or girl, unknown, talks in baby jibberish. If this was the park, this might be cute. But in the theater, in the dark, in the seats in front of me that cost nearly 30 dollars, cute is heinous. This is the equivalent of chewing day old mucous found rubbed on the wall of a kindergarten classroom.
My girlfriend goes to the bathroom. Upon her return she says “I told the manager about the child.”
“Good,” I whisper back.
Now I’m not only NOT watching the movie, I’m watching the couple in front of me watch their child who is playing in the aisle. But I’m also watching the exit waiting for the manager to enter. It’s like trying to watch 3 tennis matches at the same time. My head is on a swivel and I’m growing dizzy.
“What just happened?” my girlfriend whispers in my ear.
AAARRRGGGHHH!
I don’t know.
Is she asking about the movie? If she is then I’m now completely lost. It’s flaming aarows and Chinese acrobats and somehow Predator monsters are involved.
As far as the parents or the kidnappers?
They are talking to each other, fidgeting, moving, passing baby items back and forth in an attempt to coral their bucket of snot.
The child is now seated on the stairs, playing with a toy, and touching the underside of the theater chairs.
I wonder how much bacterium lives here?
Will this moment in this child’s life cause its DNA to genetically mutate?, I wonder.
I watch the parents for their reaction. They are snuggling. Really? Snuggling?
You trying to get you some mister? Is this a kidnapping or a first date? Make up your damn mind.
And your mutating kidnapping fetus is running loose on the stairs, DNA swab testing who knows what?
Suddenly, I see a figure enter the theater?
Is that the manager? Is it a movie patron? Is it the FBI?
It’s dark, and the silloutte doesn’t move. It doesn’t react. It doesn’t barge up the stairs and swoop up this fecal bacterium child and remove it from the filth on the stairs.
Come on kid. Coo. Cry. Wail. Do something loud. Now you’re quiet?
The kidnappers continue to watch the movie as the child, now suddenly quiet, eats a Skittle from a box dropped on the floor last Tuesday.
I stare at the screen. It is lava balls being thrown from the Great Wall of China. Tiny women are being lowered over the side of the wall upside down. They are attached to a cable by their ankles. They drop down almost to the ground, then while they are bobbing upside down in mid air, they use sharp blades to fight an army of Predator monsters.
It’s a carnival of crazy and it is louder than a jet engine.
What the hell is going on?
The scene is so loud now. The child could spontaneously combust like a Salem Witch burned at the stake, and the manager figure at the exit would not notice. The theater is filled with explosions of lava and fire and screeching monsters.
A soiled toddler eating boogers on the floor is hardly going to be noticed.
Where is the quiet scene now?
I watch as the manager leaves, the fighting ends, and Matt Damon and the female Chinese acrobat lady have a romantic moment.
The theater is quiet, and the human petri dish on the floor is making ka ka goo goo sounds again.
I am fuming mad. Is this couple so arrogant they don’t care about movie etiquette? Or are they too nescient and don’t understand that date night means you leave the lump of flesh at home and pay the teenage girl next door to watch it.
I mull over my options. Broil angrily. Smack someone in the skull. Snatch up the kid and deliver him to the popcorn pushers in the lobby and say “Take this.”
I do none of the above.
I stare at the screen. I don’t understand the plot. The movie is half over. And I’m not sure this film or this moment is worth making a scene or investing this much energy.
I think back to the FBI warning at the start of the previews.
It warns me that cell phone use during the film is RUDE, OBNOXIOUS, & ILLEGAL.
I think the FBI warning should also add a scene about kidnapping, where babies with soiled diapers crawling on the sticky goo covered filth of a theater is also frowned upon by the Department of Children’s Services.
“What’s going on?” she whispers again as a Queen Praying Mantess opens a radar antennae on her prehistoric head somehow communicating with the other predator monsters invading the village.
I stare at the filthy debacle before me. Explosions and lava balls and cuddling and cooing.
I wonder if I can get a refund in the lobby.
What would I say?
The movie is unintelligible and the kidnappers in the row ahead of me are very rude.
I sit in my chair and stew like an old man wanting to scream at someone on my lawn. I hold my tongue.
I think about when I was a young dad.
I would never have been in this situation.
That’s when I decide the social media influenced youth of this nation are a bunch of mannerless dunces who don’t understand how to socially behave away from the flickering light of their Samsung phone. As soon as they turn it off, they extinguish their link to intelligence and the real world.
If I had the kidnapper’s Twitter handle, perhaps I could have tweeted them.
Stupid Couple kidnaps child and makes it eat movie theater filth. So wrong. Get a life! Don’t invade mine. #stupidkidnapperparents
Life’s Crazy™