Friday, December 30, 2005

Another whiny post about other people's public behavior.

We went to the movies last night, or rather, yesterday late afternoon-before-the-prices-went-up, and we had a great time. (Narnia.) Ordinarily, the movie theaters in this town are almost empty; we've been to many films where we were the only patrons in the room. Last night was packed, for this town; there must have been fifty people. And, of course, even though the room was full of empty seats, empty rows, empty SECTIONS, a family with small children HAD to sit directly in front of us, and an entire row of old people HAD to sit directly behind us.

The small children had beautiful manners. They had unwrapped all their crinkly crackling candies before they entered the theater, and not once in over two hours did either parent have to remove a child for any reason. They sat spellbound and respectful and never losing track of their 'theater voice' and their public behavior directives. They were wonderful to watch. After the credits were finished rolling, I told the parents that I had noticed their children's lovely theater manners, and both mother and father thanked me.

The old people behind us were a different story. They slurped and smacked and crinkled and chewed and passed tubs of popcorn back and forth loudly, and talked aloud, and screamed like banshees whenever anything startling appeared on the screen, and could NOT shut up about how "in the book, it was different!" for about every third scene, and constantly dropped things on the floor, and took turns leaving their seats at least twice, each. And every few minutes one of them would say, loudly, "I can't see a THING over these people!"

Hello. We were there FIRST. And the theater was almost EMPTY. Morons.

And I bet those adults would be the first to complain about a little child's behavior.

Oh, how I miss the old days, when a theater hired lots of ushers to patrol up and down the aisles and throw the bums out when they so much as whispered or wiggled too much, no matter what their age. I wish theaters would do that today. They might be scared they'd lose business, but once word got out that it was 'safe' to go to the movies there, the intelligent crowd would flock there in droves. And who cares if the rowdy morons boycott your theater? The money they'd make on the returning well-behaved audience would surely more than make up for a few bucks the talkative cell-phone-addicted, screaming wiggly munchers would spend.

That family last night. I might have watched those sweet faces more than I watched the movie. Is there anything sweeter than a nice family? I don't think there is. And the fact that there are families who require excellent public behavior from themselves and from their children, gives me hope, lots of hope. Bless you, nice family. Thank you for sharing your well-behaved children with me yesterday. I'm still seeing them in my mind, and smiling.